


Crooked Love

by SnitchesAndTalkers



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Friends With Benefits, M/M, New York, wall street au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:36:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 107,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23026402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers/pseuds/SnitchesAndTalkers
Summary: Patrick works in finance. It's a very stressful job. He's very stressed.Fortunately, he has... coping mechanisms.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 1290
Kudos: 311





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> We're three months into 2020 and the world is awful and everything sucks. So, I wrote some porn, and the porn developed feelings and *gasp* _plot_. And so, I invite you to join me as we meander through a universe in which Patrick works in finance, and Pete does not, and Patrick kind of doesn't know what to do with his life, and Pete has it all figured out.

When Patrick realises he hasn’t left the office before midnight _once_ in the past three weeks, he wonders if he might’ve, possibly, made a series of horrible, _irreversible_ life choices.

Which, okay, that’s dramatic. But he’s running on two hours sleep in the past forty-eight, and he has a _huge_ presentation due in the morning, and he _can’t even begin_ to tell you how many client portfolios he _hasn’t_ looked over, and every time he looks at his phone there’s ten new notifications that he _has_ to deal with, and he’s not sure if that’s a stress headache or an aneurysm but he’s too scared to google the difference. If anyone is entitled to ten minutes of self-indulgent drama, it’s Patrick Stump, Hedge Fund Manager of T.A.I. Holdings. 

The problem is, Patrick’s job is omnipotent. Like a religion, almost. He spends fifteen hours a day in the office, and then he takes work home with him because there’s an unspoken company-wide phone policy. The policy is: Do Not Switch Off Your Fucking Phone, Asshole. There are no exceptions to this rule. The boss fired the last guy with Patrick’s job title for putting his phone on silent for the duration of his grandmother’s _funeral,_ so Patrick’s not taking any risks _._ He has a backup phone for his backup phone. He’s visited the Genius Bar for new batteries so many times, he’s convinced they think he’s a drug dealer. He lives and breathes and sweats and _sleeps_ corporate banking. Only, not really. Because he hasn’t slept since he started working for SP Holdings, but that’s okay. That’s _normal._

To sum up. He earns a generous salary but he’s got no one to spend it on, including himself, because all he does is work. He hasn’t visited his mom in two _years._ He only sleeps in his apartment one night in seven, because he spends the other six passed out at his desk. 

On the other hand, he’s twenty-nine years old and more successful than anyone else in his graduating class. His annual bonus is more than the average New Yorker earns in a decade. He’s accomplished more in five years out of grad school than most people achieve throughout their whole career. And, like, _accidentally,_ too. He’s not even _trying_ to be a good corporate banker. It comes naturally, which is either super encouraging or endlessly fucking depressing because who wants to be predisposed to _corporate_ _banking?_ Sometimes, he thinks about making a career change to something more worthwhile. Financial management of a charity, maybe. Or teaching. But every time he plucks up the courage to speak to his bosses, they say encouraging things about him _going places,_ even though he hasn’t gone _anywhere_ in _months_ because he doesn’t have time to use his vacation days _._ Then, they give him a raise and there’s only so many zeroes one man can walk away from _._ It has to count for something.

Please, God, let it count for _something._

The problem is, lack of effort doesn’t equal lack of stress. Patrick made a couple of profitable — but, crucially, _accidental_ — work-related decisions in the first year or so of his time at the company. That doesn’t mean he gets to coast. There’s a cycle. The more money he makes, the more the bosses expect him to make. The more they expect from him, the more time he spends in the office gambling pension funds and hoping for the best. It turns out, faking knowledge is not the same as _knowing something is going to work._ Patrick’s worklife is a constant spin of the roulette wheel with a wheel made of offshore accounts and the prize is Patrick’s emotional wellbeing. He’s pretty sure he has a latent stomach ulcer from the last time he almost lost several _billion_ dollars and, also, several years of his cardiac life. It’s _stressful,_ is the thing. Patrick is very fucking _stressed._

He’s trying hard _not_ to be dramatic, if that makes any difference. He’s trying hard not to think about work at all. If he thinks about work too much, he’ll start to panic, and if he panics, he won’t sleep, and all he wants to do, for once, is _sleep._

Sleep is very important to Patrick. Sleep is akin to the Holy Grail or the fucking _Menoarah:_ Patrick’s heard of them, but they’re not intimately acquainted. Sleep is the currency with which Patrick barters with _himself._ If he can just make it through another week, then he’ll feel better and he’ll sleep. Maybe next month he’ll take a vacation. If he can just make it through to New Year’s then everything will improve.

It doesn’t. 

So, Patrick has a patented four step relaxation programme for when the Ambien doesn’t cut it and, honestly, it’s working out pretty well for him so far. Here’s how it works: Step one, he lets the stress build in his chest until he feels like he’s going to _explode._ It’s important that he doesn’t react too soon. It needs to be a pressure cooker in there, a sharp and bladed pain under his ribs that says if he doesn’t slow down and react, he’s going to throw himself off Brooklyn Bridge. That’s the clear scientific indicator. Otherwise, it doesn’t work and he’s climbing the walls again three days later. 

Step two, he finds a grimy bar, far from his Wall Street office, and he gets drunk. The seedier the bar, the better. If he goes anywhere in the Financial District he runs into people he works with, or people he sees at corporate mixers, or people who know his boss. Discovering that the guy he met in a bathroom in Tribeca is _actually_ his boss’s golf buddy’s Junior VP is hideous. Finding out they have to work together on a long-standing project and the VP is needy and clingy and thinks they share a deep emotional connection is even worse. Trust him, he has prior experience to back this up.

Step three, he finds a stranger and he makes… dubious sexual decisions. So many bad choices. ‘Dead at the bottom of the Hudson’ levels of stupidity. One unlicensed cab ride from an entry in a New York Times article as _Patrick Stump, nineteenth victim of the notorious Manhattan serial killer._ Which isn’t, exactly, his life goal.

Step four, he collapses into his bed, sated, and he _sleeps like the dead_ for at least six hours. By the time he wakes up, the stress doesn’t feel like a straightjacket, and his job doesn’t seem pointless, and his life doesn’t seem completely fucking unbearable. 

Anyway, it’s working out for him so far and, after a meeting with his most demanding client for the better part of _six fucking hours,_ it feels like one of those nights, So, he loosens his tie, and pops his top button, and he gathers up his keys and his phone and his wallet. Tonight, he’ll sleep in his bed, and not sprawled across his keyboard. He’s been doing that a lot. He’s beginning to develop key-shaped indents on his cheek like some kind of weird body modification. It’s not sexy.

Joe looks at him from the next desk over, as Patrick puts on his jacket. They’ve worked together since they started interning for the company, which means it feels like Patrick’s known Joe for at least twenty years. Patrick likes Joe, because Joe doesn’t tend to ask awkward questions about Patrick’s non-existent social life and dubious extracurriculars, and he’s easily distracted if Patrick asks about the adorable little moppets in the pictures littered across Joe’s desk. 

“Uh oh,” Joe says. “Things must be bad if Patrick _Stump_ is leaving the office first.”

Patrick shrugs. “I’ve got, uh, plans. Sort of.”

This isn’t a lie. Not really.

“Out with friends?” Joe asks. 

Patrick pauses for a moment and tries to remember the last time he had a social interaction with anyone who wasn’t a colleague, or a barista, or his dry cleaner _._ “Uh, yeah,” he says, eventually, and tries to think of something someone with _friends_ might say. “Sure. Friends. We’re, um. Watching the game.”

Which sounds a lot better than ‘Actually, I’m going out, and I’m gonna let the first dude with biceps that gives me the glad eye fuck me over the bathroom sink.’ Patrick is nuanced like that. The sport thing seems reasonable: he doesn’t say which game, or which team, and sport is a universal thing that _must_ be happening _somewhere_ on any given night _._ He mimes dunking a basketball for good measure.

Joe gives him a friendly look, then shrugs. “Which game?” he asks, and Patrick nods and hums and says “Um, the… Patriots?” because he thinks that might be a sports team and Joe gives him a strange look, so Patrick tells Joe to say hi to his wife from him, and decides he’s not terrible at basic human interaction when he puts his mind to it. 

It’s only when he’s sitting in the back of a cab that Patrick realises it’s after ten and sports teams don’t tend to work the night shift and it’s not even basketball season and, anyway, the Patriots play _football_ _._ Now Joe, no doubt, thinks Patrick’s a _serial killer_ or something. And not even a good one. He’s the kind of serial killer who says he’s going to watch basketball played by a football team. He’s a Patrick Bateman of a serial killer. 

So, Patrick contemplates his own self-worth and panics quietly that he might be a tiny bit... _weird._ Which is absurd, because he’s completely normal for an hedge fund manager. He doesn’t have the emotional energy to figure out if he’s normal by the metrics with which non-bankers are measured. He doesn’t have time to care _—_ or, you know, _fix it —_ even if he is.

Honestly, _this_ is why he has the relaxation programme. He _needs_ this tonight. He’s two work-related emails from a nervous breakdown. 

The bar he’s chosen is in the East Village, tucked next to a 7/Eleven and hidden behind a metal shutter. He’s been here a couple of times before, so he knows what to expect, and he tosses a couple of bills at the driver as he climbs out onto the sidewalk. It’s a nice night. Late summer, but Patrick can smell fall in the air, feel it nipping against his knuckles as he dips into his pocket for his wallet. He pays the ten-dollar cover charge and heads inside, where he squints at the optics and tries to figure out if there’s anything with a proof high enough to drown out whatever-the-fuck is going on on the stage at the back of the room.

It’s a band. 

Apparently, anyway. ‘Band’ is synonymous with ‘music’ and whatever is leaking through the spotty sound system doesn’t qualify under any known definition of the word that Patrick’s aware of. They’re awful, really, covering _something_ by the Dropkick Murphys, but Patrick can’t work out _what,_ which kind of proves his point. Patrick orders a New York sour and knocks it back in two or three long swallows. It doesn’t improve the band, but it does make his head pleasantly light, so he orders another and takes a sip and watches them, his elbow propped on the bar. 

Either Patrick’s tolerance for alcohol is increasing, or his tolerance for terrible college bands has dropped off a cliff. He checks his phone — sixteen notifications; he answers a couple of emails — then slides it back into his pocket. He considers putting in his earbuds, but decides he’s not rude enough for that. Yet.

When they launch into an ear-splitting cover of Rocket Queen, Patrick almost changes his mind and goes home. Masturbation is a thing that exists, and he can do that with Tom Waits on the turntable and a decent glass of red, and he’s reaching for his jacket when he glances across at the stage, and then. Then he notices something. Or rather, he notices some _o_ _ne._ He sees the shirt first: the rib, pecs and lat-displaying muscle tank that showcases shoulders and biceps and forearms that flow into hands curled around a bass guitar. Then the mouth, and the jaw, and the lean, muscular thighs. Whoever he is, he’s extremely fucking hot, and for a moment they make eye contact and the guy’s mouth curls into a smirk that Patrick feels all the way down to his Bondeno handmade Italian leather soles. Patrick raises his eyebrows and feels the corners of his mouth lift and the bassist _winks,_ an unfairly sexy manoeuvre that Patrick almost wants to hold against him. But won’t, because there are other more pressing things he intends to hold against him instead. 

There’s no need to leave the bar. Patrick is now forcibly compelled to remain at his stool, with his drink, for however long the band intends to keep making noise. Fortunately, this turns out to be not long at all, and they wrap up with the Guns N Roses cover to a smattering of lukewarm applause. Patrick turns in his seat and keeps his eyes on his drink. 

It’s a waiting game now. However long it takes for the bass player to pack up and talk to his buddies and decide he’s spent long enough pretending he isn’t interested before he proves he absolutely is. Patrick flicks a glance at his watch: fifteen minutes is the norm. Ten is good. Twenty will piss him off. 

Someone slips into Patrick’s orbit, so close that when they speak, they stir the prickling hair at the nape of Patrick’s neck. So close that Patrick can smell the cologne and laundry soap and fresh sweat and hot skin. Two minutes. He’s eager. Patrick sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and waits.

“Hey, Wall Street. All alone?” 


	2. Chapter 2

Patrick doesn’t have to look to know who’s speaking to him. It’s not vanity, exactly, but Patrick’s been doing this for long enough that he’s figured out when someone is interested. No one looks at someone the way Hot Bassist looked at him from the stage and doesn’t act on it. Patrick shifts his weight on the bar stool and thinks that tonight might turn out well, if he can get Hot Bassist back to his apartment and fuck him within the hour. 

He could be asleep by midnight. 

That’s a new record, and Patrick is nothing if not motivated by a desire to exceed his own expectations.

“Can I help you with something?” Patrick asks, sounding bored.

Hot Bassist is as close as he can get without actually touching Patrick, his breath tickling under Patrick’s shirt collar. The body heat kicking off him seeps through Patrick’s shirt and curls over his ribs. Patrick’s nipples tighten. 

“I doubt it,” Hot Bassist says, his mouth very close to Patrick’s ear. “You look like you’re  _ all the way over  _ on the wrong side of, like, several sets of wrong tracks. You lost, Wall Street?”

“What makes you think I’m not from around here?” Patrick asks, a little affronted, but mostly curious. He could live in the East Village. He could. The area’s gentrifying, after all. 

Hot Bassist laughs to himself. “Designer suit,” he says. Before Patrick can correct him, he continues, “No. Not designer,  _ tailored,  _ right? Handmade.  _ Expensive.  _ Three-piece, but no jacket; this is you dressed down for the evening. There’s a phone in your pocket, or you’re, like,  _ super  _ pleased to see me. You keep checking it, touching it, you’re  _ terrified _ of losing it. So, it’s a work thing, and you won’t take public transport where it might get swiped while you’re reading it, which means you can afford to travel in cars while someone else drives. Your watch is nice, but not as nice as the suit, so it was  _ probably _ a graduation gift from parents who don’t live in New York. You got a good degree and moved out here and they’re proud of you. You wear it out of sentimentality and because you miss them, even though you could afford something better. A homebody. That’s nice. So, what do you do for a living? Something corporate, maybe? Upper management. Not likely. You’re  _ pale, _ man. You don’t travel for conferences. Could be a lawyer, I guess. But you could do that back home and you don’t have the  _ snarl  _ for it, if you know what I mean. So, that leaves finance. Wall Street.” He smiles, Patrick can  _ hear _ it. “How’d I do?”

Patrick scowls. “It’s not nice to stereotype.” He thinks he might hate Hot Bassist, just a little. Not enough to  _ not _ fuck him. But still.

The guy bumps Patrick gently with his shoulder. “I’m not stereotyping, I’m  _ profiling.” _

“What, you’re a cop now?” Patrick sniffs. “Wait. Do cops have time to play bass in shitty cover bands?”

“Lots of professions read people,” he shrugs, waving a twenty at the bartender. “I could be a TV psychic. Psychics cold read people  _ all the time.” _

“You’re not imaginative enough to pretend to be psychic,” Patrick says, noting that, whoever this guy is, he has  _ beautiful _ hands. 

“You’re hurting my feelings,” he says. He sounds like his eyes are crinkling at the corners. It takes every ounce of willpower Patrick possesses  _ not  _ to turn and look. 

“If you’re a TV psychic, you don’t have feelings,” Patrick snaps. Hot Bassist laughs like this is the most hilarious thing he’s ever heard. Patrick’s not that funny and knows it, so he tosses his hair out of his eyes and finishes his drink. 

“I’m fucking with you, man,” he says. His voice still sounds smiley and he holds out his hand. “You dropped this.”

Patrick snatches his own business card from between Hot Bassist’s pointer and middle fingers. “Oh,  _ fuck  _ you.”

The guy holds up a hand, a very nice hand, a hand without a wedding ring. “But, we agree you’re out of your comfort zone, not in your natural habitat. The next question, Patrick Stump, Hedge Fund Manager, is  _ why.” _

Patrick lifts one shoulder. “You know how it is. Every so often, it all gets too much and I have to wander the streets of Manhattan and hurt myself with terrible music.”

Hot Bassist laughs and doesn’t seem put in his place. “Then you’re  _ definitely  _ in the wrong place.  _ That  _ was musical history, my friend.”

“You seem to be under the impression that  _ historical _ means the same thing as  _ good. _ Many  _ historical _ things were awful.” Patrick cocks his head to one side and stares at his empty glass.  _ “Most _ historical things were awful, actually.”

“Yeah? So, why’re you still here?”

“My ears are naughty and deserve to be punished,” Patrick says. 

“Only your ears, huh?” he teases, and he runs a fingertip lightly where Patrick’s rolled shirtsleeve meets his forearm. 

It’s a very light touch, as far as touches go, and the forearm isn’t a noted erogenous zone, but Patrick feels that touch all the way through skin and bone and marrow and down to his dorsal vein. His dick twitches, but he tamps it down. There’s a lot to be explored here, clearly. Penis-related things,  _ obviously, _ but also  _ other _ things. Things like: will Patrick react like this when Hot Bassist touches his knees? His wrists? The tip of his nose? The possibilities are boundless.

Patrick stares down at the finger resting casually against his arm. Then he turns in his seat and looks Hot Bassist up and down.

It’s hard to see in the gloom of the bar, but what Patrick establishes is this: Hot Bassist is short. Barely taller than Patrick, but with a presence that makes him seem much bigger. He’s handsome enough that Patrick doesn’t take the time to examine individual features. There’s a general  _ air  _ of attractiveness. It’s pleasing, from an aesthetic point of view. He has nice hands, and good arms, with interesting-looking tattoos and he sort of… drips  _ confidence  _ over everything. Like he’s made of candle wax. Or ink. A leaky fountain pen of a person with a devilish smile and coppery eyes and sweaty hair curling to the nape of his neck.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asks, looking at Patrick’s empty glass.

Patrick nods and asks for the most ridiculous thing on the menu, just to be an asshole. No one looks cool ordering a slippery nipple _.  _ Not that this guy looks like he cares what anyone in the bar thinks of him, and, for the record, the woman behind the bar seems to think he’s  _ hilarious. _ His smile is… incredible, though. When he smiles, it sparks his whole face, points of light, like a constellation. And then, because it’s weird to stand at the bar thinking about this guy’s pretty smile, Patrick leans back on his stool and admires his ass, instead. 

“My name’s Pete, by the way,” he says, when they have their drinks.

Patrick shrugs, and doesn’t stop staring at Pete’s ass. “Okay.”

“Wentz,” Pete adds. “In case you… I don’t know. In case you’re interested.”

“Not really,” Patrick says. 

Pete looks affronted. “O- _ kay. _ Wow.” He pauses and takes a sip of his beer. “Well, we’ve established you’re basically rude as fuck. I  _ liked _ you, Wall Street, and you’re hurting my feelings. What’s the etiquette here?”

“You come back to my place, and you take off all your clothes, and you lie back on the bed and let me ride you through the mattress,” Patrick says, like he’s ordering lox at the kosher deli half a block from his apartment. Like he propositions handsome bassists all the time. 

There’s a small, startled pause as Pete sucks in a breath. It turns into a slightly longer pause when he starts choking on a lungful of beer. Patrick watches him choke and drinks his cocktail. Sambuca is the worst. He’s a victim of his own hubris.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Pete wheezes, brushing beer from his shirt. “What the fuck?”

“I don’t have time to fuck around,” Patrick says, because he  _ doesn’t. _ He’s due back at work in eight hours. Time is a luxury he does  _ not  _ have. “I need to get laid.”

_ “Need?  _ Like, a medical emergency?” Pete asks, still coughing up Pabst. “Fuck or die?”

“Look,” Patrick says, with a lot more patience than he actually feels. “You’re here, you’re decently good-looking, and you don’t  _ seem _ like you’ll chop me into pieces and drop me in the Hudson. Toss in a functioning dick and you’ve hit all the major prerequisites.” Pete looks at him, startled, so Patrick feels the need to qualify. “You do  _ have _ a functioning dick, right?”

That’s an artform, Patrick thinks proudly. The ability to assess the room and figure out who’s likely to take him home and  _ not _ do something unconscionable behind a locked door. Patrick’s pretty sure they’d find him quickly — the concierge would worry if Patrick didn’t tear past him at seven in the morning on a weekday, briefcase in one hand, Wall Street Journal in the other. But that’s scant comfort if he’s found  _ dead _ . Patrick prides himself on his ability to pick up dudes who lack the necessary moral fibre to demand a first date before they suck him off, but also finding the ones who are gentlemanly enough not to take things too far.

“Yes, I have a functioning dick.” Pete laughs again. “‘Decently good-looking?’ Fuck. You’re charming the pants off me right now.” 

“Good. That saves time.” Patrick rests his hand against Pete’s thigh, right above the knee, and squeezes. 

Pete makes a rough, gaspy sound and flushes over his cheekbones. Which are  _ to die for, _ by the way. “Wow, holy — Gimme a minute here, Wall Street. I’m having a little trouble keeping up. You went, like, zero to warp speed in a very short space of time.”

Patrick sighs and rolls his eyes. “Do you want to fuck me, or not?” 

“No dinner and a movie?” Pete asks, his voice light. 

“No dinner and a movie,” Patrick confirms. “Look, are you interested? If you  _ are,  _ great! Let’s go back to my place. If you’re  _ not, _ could you, like,  _ move _ or something? Before people start thinking you’re my boyfriend.”

“Wait,” Pete says. “Wait, are you serious? This isn’t, like, Advanced FiDi Flirting? You  _ actually _ want to take me home? Me? The guy you met less than two minutes ago? Seriously?”

“As a heart attack,” Patrick says. Ironic, because a heart attack is what he’ll have if he doesn’t fuck out some of the nervous tension gathering in his heart, lungs and assorted viscera. “I don’t like to waste time.” 

Which is true, because Patrick’s day is measured in six minute increments. Like,  _ 10:00 - 10:06, looked over Trinity Account. 10:06 -10:12, emailed account manager about possible merger opportunities. 10:12 - 10:18, amended acquisitions. _

Patrick gets depressed filling in those time logs. He imagines, for a moment, fishing out his iPhone now and being honest:  _ 22:54 - 23:00 - seduced mediocre bassist. _

Pete looks Patrick over like he’s undressing him. A long, hungry look that makes Patrick shiver, then he places his beer back down on the bar. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay. Alright, fuck it. Carpe diem, right? Let’s go.”

Patrick hesitates for a moment, like he always does at this point, and thinks about murder statistics and the likelihood of losing his home cinema and Bang and Olufsen sound system in a gunpoint robbery. But only for a moment. As long as it takes Pete to smile at him, actually. A bottle rocket of lust explodes somewhere south of Patrick’s belt buckle. Doesn’t he deserve sex with a good-looking stranger? Isn’t this the American dream? Then, he grabs his jacket and fluffs his fingers through his hair and follows Pete out onto the sidewalk and into a cab. This is what he needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm not generally going to do twice-weekly updates. Mostly because my chapters _tend_ to be around 4-5k in length and no one needs me to throw 10k a week out into the ether! But, with chapters like this, where they're short, I might post two in a week. 
> 
> In summary: I'll _always_ update on Thursdays, but I _might_ also update on Mondays, if the chapter is short, if that's alright?


	3. Chapter 3

They take a cab along 1st and 79th, through the park. 

Patrick keeps his hands to himself and away from his phone, but only by folding them in his lap and pressing his thumbs into his palms. Pete fingers Patrick’s collar, carding his fingertips through the hair at Patrick’s nape as he talks sports with the driver. For someone who seemed surprised to pick up a stranger in a bar, he’s acting like he does this all the time. It’s not significantly colder than it was when Patrick stepped into the club twenty minutes ago, but now Patrick’s shivering, even with his jacket, so he bites his thumb nail and stares out of the window until they turn onto his block. 

“Here,” he tells the driver, pointing. “Yeah. Fifty-five.”

Pete whistles through his teeth and looks up. “Wall Street,” he says, and it’s obvious he’s impressed. “This place is  _ fancy.” _

Patrick nods and hands the cab driver a couple of twenties.

“What were you expecting? A shitty walk up in Midtown?” 

He  _ knows _ he sounds like an asshole, but Pete held all the cards in the bar and now Patrick feels in control, powerful, coasting on the same confidence he rides into the boardroom. 

Patrick lives in an elegant, turn-of-the-century Renaissance-style apartment block in the Upper West Side. There’s a lot of creamy gold sandstone and pillared doorways stretching in either direction along the avenue. This particular building has actual, honest-to-God  _ turrets, _ so Patrick can pretend he’s the heroine in a French romance novel. A coded gate  _ and _ a concierge guard the heavy oak door. He waves them inside and Patrick leads the way across the foyer.

“Do you like it?” Patrick asks, as they wait for the elevator. 

Pete looks around and shrugs. “You’d fit a  _ lot _ of homeless people in here.”

Patrick  _ stares _ at Pete, with his mouth open most likely. He tries to talk and a few awkward syllables tumble out. Pete looks back at him levelly. Patrick was clearly a very stupid man to imagine he might be in charge.

“What — I mean. What the fuck does  _ that _ have to do with anything?” 

Now, Patrick has to think of a way to justify his salary, which is his least favourite pastime. He donates to charity, okay? He has regular debits set up from his account and, last year, he thought about volunteering at a soup kitchen because he figured it would give him someone to talk to and, God knows, he could use some company. The excuse to leave the office early once a week was the icing on the burnout cake. 

But then a big project came in, and then another, and he sort of forgot about it, and now this dude — this tattooed hipster horrible bass player — is standing in the foyer of Patrick’s expensive apartment building and talking about  _ homeless people.  _ Like Patrick can  _ fix _ the problem of NYC homelessness just because he works on Wall Street. Like Patrick  _ is _ the problem.

Look, Patrick just wants to get his dick sucked and get some sleep, alright?  _ Now  _ he has to log in to his bank account and up his donations or he won’t stop thinking about it all night.

Pete shrugs again, delicately this time, and squeaks the toe of his sneaker against the tile. “I’m just saying,” he  _ just says,  _ smiling. “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

Before Patrick can say anything else, the elevator doors slide open and, like he owns the place, Pete saunters inside and leans against the wall, humming to himself. Confident and completely at ease and so very sexy. Let the record show that Patrick is  _ not _ charmed by this.

(Amendment: Patrick is  _ frustratingly _ charmed by this.)

Pete grins. “You coming?” 

_ Asshole, _ Patrick thinks sourly, and follows him like a shadow, feeling nervous and completely on the back foot and like he doesn’t live here at all. The doors slide closed behind them. For the first time, they’re alone.

And, before Patrick can say anything about  _ that, _ Pete steps so close that Patrick can see each fleck of gold and copper in his eyes. He closes one fist in Patrick’s tie and the other in the hair above Patrick’s left ear, and, with his mouth atoms from Patrick’s, he lets out a low exhale. His breath smells of peppermint gum and hopsy sweetness from the beer, and Patrick catalogs that, files it away and looks into Pete’s whisky-coloured eyes with a dry mouth and sweaty palms. He’s fucked, he thinks, panicking a little, he’s so completely fucked. 

“This okay?” Pete asks. And Patrick nods, or closes his eyes, or licks his lips, or does  _ something _ that shows how  _ okay _ with this he is, because Pete touches his mouth to Patrick’s with such confusing tenderness that Patrick gasps. They kiss slowly, a gentle exploration of mouths and tongues and teeth. Patrick feels the moment Pete gives, the way his mouth closes over Patrick’s and he shoves Patrick back against the wall and Pete  _ kisses him breathless.  _ Patrick slides his arms around Pete’s neck and holds on for dear life.

It’s a kiss like a lightning storm, all brilliance and spark. Pete parts Patrick’s teeth with his tongue and licks into his mouth with precision and gutsy confidence. He traces his tongue against the rough of Patrick’s mouth. He kisses Patrick so thoroughly that Patrick doesn’t think he’ll ever need to be kissed again. Pete’s erection is hard and obvious as anything, pressed up against Patrick’s crotch. That’s flattering and also makes Patrick feel less teenage about his own stiff cock. Patrick, pinned in place between Pete’s chest and the wall, with Pete’s hand fisted in the knot of his tie and Pete’s dick against his own, feels rather than hears the noise he makes in the back of his throat. 

The elevator has never reached the top floor so quickly. The doors open onto Patrick’s hallway and Patrick blinks, urgent with the need to put a locked door between the two of them and his neighbours. Patrick twists his hand with Pete’s and tows him along towards his apartment with single-minded determination. 

Pete has other ideas and crushes Patrick up against the hallway wall and Patrick’s about to shove him off and call him a dickhead, but then... Then a hand dips into Patrick’s pants: under the buckle, over the briefs. It’s warm and it’s rough and Patrick is  _ pinned to the wall, _ not a scenario he imagined himself enjoying but his penis seems into it _. _ Pete’s fingers curl precisely. Patrick’s hips jolt back on instinct, then surge forward a heartbeat later as Pete bites into Patrick’s lip and strokes, sure and confident, over Patrick’s cotton-covered junk. Patrick goes limp and makes a soft, urgent sound against Pete’s mouth.

Pete presses his palm, flat, over the only part of Patrick that isn’t liquid, pressing his cock up, trapping it between Pete’s hand and Patrick’s belly. The heat is indescribable, burning through Patrick’s skin like phosphorus. Pete’s mouth makes a leisurely exploration of Patrick’s throat, his teeth grazing over Patrick’s pulse, nipping into the soft spot just beneath Patrick’s jaw. The place where Patrick is tingly and sensitive. The place with a golden thread that runs straight to Patrick’s dick. Patrick feels his pulse there, between his legs, thick and syrupy. 

Pete murmurs against Patrick’s throat, his voice rough. “Would you let me do it here? Would you let me get you off where the neighbours could see?” 

Patrick throws his head back and shivers. The spark in Pete’s eyes could start a catastrophic house fire and burn the whole building down to the foundations. Patrick has two fistfuls of flannel and a mouth thick with Pete’s taste. There’s a buzz on his skin like he’s made of television static and he can’t remember where he is, or why he shouldn’t...

“No,” he whispers, although he suspects that’s academic and, in reality, if Pete fell to his knees and pulled down Patrick’s pants and briefs and sucked him off against the expensive wallpaper, Patrick wouldn’t stop him  _ at all.  _ Pete laughs, low and gravelly, like he knows this. He squeezes Patrick’s dick and Patrick whines a greedy,  _ needy _ whine and arches his hips into Pete’s fist. Patrick says, as an afterthought, “You’re  _ not _ the one in charge,” but he suspects they both know he’s lying.

Pete laughs again and pulls his hand from Patrick’s pants. He runs his fingers over Patrick’s cheek, grazing his thumb over Patrick’s mouth. Patrick can smell himself on Pete’s skin: faint and salty. Pete slides two fingers into Patrick’s mouth and presses down, hard, on his tongue. Patrick sucks. His circulatory system goes haywire and his cock gives a hard twitch and Patrick’s knees buckle. 

“You want to lead?” Pete asks, amused, holding Patrick upright with his hips. “You want to take charge and fuck me?”

Patrick nods and pulls his mouth off Pete’s fingers. The ability to form thoughts as whole sentences returns with the flow of oxygenated blood to things other than his penis. “I’m—” he starts, then swallows it down. Patrick is paid a seven-figure salary to make decisions. He is executively qualified to think and react and  _ choose _ and he doesn’t trust Pete to know how to do this correctly. But there’s still a lot of blood capped in his cock and he doesn’t know how to phrase that eloquently so he kisses Pete hard on the mouth and tastes sugar from the alcohol and, when he pulls back, he says, “I’m in charge. Not you.”

The look Pete gives him is knowing. In the clear light of the apartment building hallway, he’s painfully fucking sexy. All cheekbones and jawline and strength through his shoulders. Pete is a handsome dude, probably the handsomest Patrick’s brought home to date. Shining and gorgeous and eminently fuckable. Patrick kisses Pete’s wide, flat mouth and crushes a fist into the messy scruff of Pete’s hair. 

Pete pulls back with a shiny smirk. “Go ahead, Wall Street. Take charge.” 

What happens next stutters through Patrick’s sex-addled brain like a series of underdeveloped polaroids. They take three steps, then Pete kisses his neck. They crush their mouths together and stagger into the wall, a door, a neighbour’s door,  _ Patrick’s _ door. The key puts up a fight. In the time between leaving the office and arriving at his front door Patrick seems to have gained ten extra digits, all of them thumbs, and none of them capable of operating a straightforward mortise lock. Before Patrick can Jack Nicholson his way through the wood, Pete grabs his wrist and, slowly, guides Patrick’s hand to the lock and slides the key inside. The calluses on Pete’s fingers make Patrick feel jagged and weak enough that he has to pause to suck in a deep, shaky breath. For non-forcible residential property entry, it’s alarmingly fucking sexy. Patrick makes a low, primal sound and falls into his apartment, dragging Pete behind him. 

They puddle clothing on the floor. Patrick’s suit jacket dropped by the front door; Pete’s shirts — flannel  _ and _ muscle — halfway down the hall; Patrick’s shoes in the living room doorway; Pete’s belt on the bureau. Patrick finds the tattoo around Pete’s throat and tests it with his teeth; Pete sucks an urgent pink nipple into his mouth and  _ bites  _ and Patrick’s lower body liquefies like molten silver. They reach the bedroom door and pause, dressed in their underwear and nothing else. 

“That’s your bed,” Pete says. Patrick takes a long, slow breath and defies himself not to come in his pants. 

“It is,” Patrick agrees. 

Pete tips his head to one side and looks at Patrick. “You’re going to fuck me on it. Right?”

Patrick makes a self conscious gesture towards Pete’s cock, thick and hard and already leaking in his shorts. “I’m, uh. I’m going to. You know. If you don’t mind?”

Pete leans against the doorframe and reaches down and grabs his dick and  _ tugs _ slowly, one corner of his mouth curling up in a smirk. Patrick chokes on his tongue, possibly ascends the physical plane altogether, definitely loses half of his circulatory system to a life-altering twitch of his dick. He has no idea how he’s still contained in his skin. He feels… glutinous. Like he might burst if Pete presses his fingers in just the right way.

“You’re in charge,” Pete reminds him.

And then Pete peels off his briefs. 

Patrick stares. The look he gives Pete is  _ starving. _ Pete’s erection is a handsome,  _ wonderful _ thing, thick and rosy with blood and curving up to meet a tattoo carved between his hips. Patrick’s breathing is quick, his heart rate quicker. He digs his fingernails into his thighs and tells himself that he’s not going to be needy, he’s not going to — 

“Can I suck you off?” he blurts out hoarsely, because he’s  _ embarrassingly _ needy. Whatever. Not like he’s ever going to see Pete again and every moment he  _ isn’t _ sucking Pete’s dick is a moment wasted. 

Pete’s grin is fangy and sharp. He grasps his cock and smears thick, pearly precome against the tattoo on his belly and Patrick eyes it like the starting point on a wonderful treasure map. “Be my guest,” he murmurs. “Make it good.”

The hardwood is cold under Patrick’s bare knees and he shivers. He reaches for Pete’s hips but Pete backs up across the room towards Patrick’s bed, holding his dick in his fist like a shiny red compass needle. Patrick crawls after him, cock throbbing, and thinks this is degrading, probably, but worth it. 

“Good boy,” Pete whispers, sinking a hand into Patrick’s hair and holding his cock steady with the other. “Go ahead. Take it. Just how you want it. I’ll be gentle.”

“Your tattoo is ridiculous,” Patrick tells him seriously. Pete laughs, then breaks on a gasp as Patrick licks it thoroughly, tasting Pete all salt and musk on his tongue. The gasp is a good thing, Patrick thinks, and he opens his mouth and, maintaining eye contact, licks a strip up Pete’s cock, balls to tip. Pete makes a sound: a low, rumbling growl deep in his chest. Patrick flutters his eyelashes, parts his lips, and then sucks the swollen head into his mouth.

“Jesus Christ,” Pete gasps, sagging towards Patrick’s mouth like his centre of gravity is at the back of Patrick’s throat. “Fuck yeah. Just like that.” 

Patrick sucks like he’s pulling out venom.

And oh, Pete’s dick is a lovely dick. And yes, this is wonderful, this is perfect, and Pete’s dick is probably the nicest dick Patrick’s sucked in recent memory and Pete makes these gorgeous, breathy little moans as his hips rock and his cock touches the sensitive pearl of Patrick’s gag reflex and Patrick’s got him close, he  _ knows _ Pete’s close, just from letting Pete fuck his mouth like this, and Pete’s hands are twisted in Patrick’s hair and he’s gasping out “Patrick, Patrick, gonna come, Patrick,” and  _ God, _ Patrick wants Pete to come, wants to take him apart completely and then Pete pulls out, his dick sliding sloppily over Patrick’s lips and Pete’s doubled over with the heel of his hand pressed hard to the base of his cock. 

“Fuck,” Pete grits out between his teeth. “Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck. _ You’re… Fuck. You’re  _ very _ good at that.”

“Ngh,” Patrick says, stupidly, blinking up at Pete from the bedroom floor. It’s dark and Patrick’s not wearing his glasses and he wishes he’d knocked on a lamp. Pete looks so astonishingly lovely in the light easing in through the open blinds. 

“Fuck,” Pete whispers again, pulling Patrick up to his lips and kissing him slow and deep and like he wants to lick the evidence of his dick from Patrick’s mouth. “Get on the bed. Ass up.” 

Patrick thinks about protesting but his brain is leaking out of his cock. Pete grabs him by the hips and tosses him onto the mattress like he weighs nothing at all. His back arches and Pete’s knuckles trail his spine. 

“God,” Pete whispers, awed. “Look at that  _ arch.” _ And Patrick dips his back and rounds his ass and  _ moans  _ into the comforter. 

Pete grabs the hem of Patrick’s briefs and pulls them down, lets them rest just under the swell of his ass. Patrick wriggles, grinds his stiff dick into the bed and flexes his fingers against the sheets. The mattress gives under his knees as Pete pulls him apart and buries his face between Patrick’s cheeks, licking him thoroughly. The noise Patrick makes is  _ humiliating. _ His hips buck and his cock leaks and he cries out into the pillow as Pete works his tongue over his hole with dedication. 

“Beautiful,” Pete declares, pulling back and pressing a wet kiss to Patrick’s ass cheek.

“I’m in charge,” Patrick protests weakly, as Pete fumbles in the night stand for lube and a condom.

Pete kisses Patrick once, right between his shoulder blades, and whispers into his skin, “I know you are,” and then he’s sliding two slippery fingers into Patrick’s hole and Patrick’s crying out, his legs spasming, his toes scrambling uselessly against the bed. It’s so much. The stretch and burn of it pulling at Patrick exquisitely. Pete’s got him pinned, his legs spread over Patrick’s thighs and holding him down. He touches the hot, golden gland of Patrick’s prostate and holds him steady and Patrick thinks  _ Jesus Christ _ and then just… stops. Stops thinking. Stops moving. Stops doing anything that isn’t taking short, gaspy breaths through his nose and feeling Pete’s fingers inside of him. 

Pete bites Patrick’s earlobe and Patrick whines. 

“Shh,” Pete whispers, and Patrick, miraculously, doesn’t buck him off and call him an asshole. 

Instead, he lies still as Pete wraps and slicks his cock. He spreads his legs and cants his hips and lets Pete peel off his underwear and then Pete is pushing into him, his hands spread over Patrick’s ass cheeks, his thumbs digging down into the crease and holding him open. Patrick cries out with the kind of eager abandon he rarely feels when someone is inside of him. He pushes up on his palms, cranes his neck to look back and gets a moment to see the dark, hard length of Pete sinking into his hole. 

“You’re so fucking big,” he whispers. Then Pete closes his hands around Patrick’s wrists and pulls them into the small of his back, one at a time. Helpless, Patrick’s face drops into the comforter. He can’t move, which is definitely a cause for alarm. Distantly, he knows that he ought to be alarmed. But he… trusts Pete. Sort of implicitly. He trusts him enough to lie there and take it, his thoughts liquid and soft and warm as honey. 

“I’ll go slow,” Pete tells him, rather than asking how Patrick wants it. But that  _ is _ how Patrick wants it, Pete fucking into him like they were made to do this, like they’ve spent the past decade of their lives rehearsing how to fuck like this. Patrick makes a short, needy sound and drools into the sheets and flexes his wrists against Pete’s handcuff hold. 

It is  _ exquisite.  _ Patrick didn’t imagine it would feel this  _ good _ to let someone else think for him. He slides his dick into a crease in the comforter and lets Pete fuck him closer and closer to that white-edged brilliance he’s craved since he walked out of the office. 

“Please,” he gasps into the pillow. The begging pulls him up short for a breathless second, like, does he want to beg? Is that a thing he’s into? Pete works him with long, slow pulls of his cock and Patrick licks his lips, and tries again. “Fuck, please. Touch me? Please?”

Pete hums something that sounds like agreement, or a laugh, or both. He wraps one broad, strong hand around both of Patrick’s wrists and drags Patrick’s hips up with the other. Patrick goes willingly, folds his knees under himself and cries out when Pete shoves up against his prostate with new determination. His dick bounces against his stomach, his thighs. Patrick’s vision goes white at the corners and his cheek smears sticky with his own needy drool. “Please,” he gasps again, broken. “Pete,  _ please.” _

Pete wraps his hand around Patrick’s cock and Patrick sees the world in bright, hot flashes of light. Pete doesn’t stroke, not exactly, just lets the thrust of his hips drive Patrick into his fist. It’s never felt like this before. It’s never been like this before. Patrick is going temporarily insane from this.

It feels so good and Patrick is so desperate and Pete is gripping his wrists  _ just so _ and Patrick doesn’t last long before he comes with something that sounds like a wail. Pete fucks him harder, faster, expands the glowing ember of Patrick’s orgasm until he’s burning all over and feeling tiny sparking aftershocks in his fingers and toes. Patrick chokes out gaspy groans until Pete stiffens behind him, shoves in deep enough that Patrick sees fucking  _ stars,  _ and Pete comes, his teeth buried in the back of Patrick’s neck. 

They stay like that for a moment, slumped into the mattress and catching their breath. Patrick blinks down and watches his cock soften against his thigh. Pete grasps Patrick’s chin and turns his head and kisses him, sweet and tender and lovely, his mouth slick and hot. 

“Fuck,” Patrick whispers, on a long exhale.

Pete pulls out slowly and Patrick feels emptier than he should for losing a dick inside of him. His whole body feels hollow as he lies in a mess of lube and his own come and listens, eyes closed, to Pete tying off the condom and rolling off the bed. In search of the bathroom most likely. Patrick’s wrists tingle with the pressure of Pete’s hands. Patrick’s never been fucked like that. Not by anyone, but definitely not by someone like Pete. Not by someone classically trained in the art of Patrick’s cock. Patrick needs a minute to process everything, if you don’t mind. 

When Pete returns, he’s got a glass of water. He sits on the edge of the mattress and strokes Patrick’s sweaty hair and his sweaty back with such unimaginable tenderness. Patrick summons the gross motor control to raise his head. Pete holds the glass to Patrick’s mouth and Patrick takes long, grateful gulps of faucet water. His nose wrinkles. There’s Evian in the fridge.

“I don’t—” he starts, then stops. He takes a deep breath and tries again. “I’ve never let anyone do that to me before.”

What he wants to say is  _ I’ve never been fucked like that and I think you might have one of those mythical magic cocks and there’s no way you should ever do anything that isn’t fucking me, ever again.  _ But that sounds needy, and he doesn’t want a boyfriend, so he bites his lip and drops his face back into the pillow. On rare occasions, Patrick thinks he might have the whole…  _ adulting  _ thing figured out, but then something like  _ this _ happens and he realises he’s still faking it til he makes it.

“You okay, Wall Street?” Pete asks, touching Patrick’s hair lightly. 

“Fine,” Patrick says hoarsely. “I — That was fucking incredible, actually.”

Pete grins an insufferable, wolfy grin. “You’re welcome.”

“And  _ you’re _ full of it,” Patrick bites, without any real heat behind it. “How’d you know I’d like that?  _ I _ didn’t even know I’d like that.”

Pete chuckles softly. “I told you. I can read people.”

“You can read  _ business cards. _ Which, like, colour me amazed because you don’t look like you can read  _ anything.” _

Pete laughs at that. A big, bright  _ ugly _ snorting laugh that erupts out of his nose. 

“Snob,” he says fondly. 

“Asshole,” Patrick says, amused.

Patrick takes a deep breath. He’s tired, which is good. He’s also resigning himself to a reality in which he doesn’t get Pete’s dick again. It’s okay, there’s plenty of dick in the sea. Or something. Phraseology isn’t his strong suit. The important thing is that Pete leaves and Patrick gets some sleep and then goes back to being a normal, functioning human being tomorrow and not the sex-starved, stressed-out maniac he’s been for the past week or so.

Pete lies down next to Patrick on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, toying absently with Patrick’s ass like he’s thinking of gearing up for a second round. 

“You should get going,” Patrick says. “It’s late. Or early. Depending on perspective.”

Pete’s shoulders tense. “You’re kicking me out?” He sounds distinctly unthrilled by this prospect, which makes sense because it’s after midnight and Pete absolutely does not live in the Upper West Side. “Are you being serious?”

“Sorry, I just don’t really do sleepovers, you know?” Patrick says, rolling his face back into his pillow. “I mean, there’s cash. In the dish on the bureau in the hall. You can — there’s enough for cab fare.” 

Pete stops touching Patrick. When he speaks, his voice sounds cold and far away. “I don’t need your money.”

“Okay,” Patrick says, and presses down into his mattress. “That was fun. You’re a nice guy.”

“Do you... I don’t know. Do you want my number?” Pete asks. 

“I don’t date,” Patrick says, blinking up at Pete, now dressed in his underwear and socks and hunting for his shirt and pants. “Your jeans are in the hall,” Patrick tells him, helpfully he thinks. Pete grunts, so maybe not. “It’s not personal. Well, it sort of is, but, like, it’s not you, it’s me. I’m not exactly solid dating material.”

“I didn’t ask you to date me,” Pete says. 

“You asked for my number, which suggests you want to call me, which means you probably  _ do _ want to date me,” Patrick points out. “And… no. You and I are, God, how do I say this without sounding like a total douchebag? Um, we’re not exactly compatible. Right?”

“You’re — God, you’re kind of a dick, you know? I don’t think I’d  _ want  _ to date you,” Pete says, sounding hurt.

“If you don’t want to date me, you can probably stop being an asshole,” Patrick points out.

Pete is very quiet and Patrick’s so tired. So judiciously and soundly  _ fucked _ that he can’t bring himself to care about Pete’s stupid hurt feelings. It was a one night stand, not a marriage proposal. In another situation, Patrick might feel guilty, but Patrick is good at nothing if not compartmentalisation. And hedge fund management. And the acquisition of finely tailored suits. He has a very narrow skillset, is the thing, but it’s served him well so far.

Pete pauses in the doorway. “Well. It was fun, I guess.” He sounds like he’s being sarcastic. “Good luck to the next guy.”

Patrick’s almost asleep. 

“Nice to meet you,” he mumbles absently, like this is a business meeting. “Um, could you close the door behind you?”

The door slams loudly, so Patrick jumps and blinks and thinks Pete might  _ actually  _ be pissed off with him. An outrageous position for Pete to assume because, seriously, the first rule of one night stands is don’t anticipate anything concrete from a one night stand. Not that it makes any difference because he’s never going to see Pete again, so what does it matter if an East Village hipster dislikes him? Patrick’s life is complicated in so many ways, but at least this, this  _ thing  _ that he does, is deliciously uncomplicated  _ for him. _

Patrick closes his eyes and sleeps, blissfully, sore and sated and relaxed down to his marrow. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't write short sex scenes. It's a real problem...


	4. Chapter 4

The magical properties of Pete’s penis have been greatly exaggerated.

Patrick thinks this, glumly, as he stands in line at the coffee shop two blocks from his office and watches the barista working his way down the line with the slow, unflappable calm of a man who is a) at work already b) has been for the past two hours, and c) doesn’t care that other people have jobs. 

Unofficially, Patrick was late for work thirty minutes ago. If the line doesn’t evaporate in the next two minutes, then Patrick’s lateness will become  _ contractual.  _ This is a much bigger problem and one he doesn’t want to deal with on a Tuesday morning. He rattles the loose change in his pocket and glares at Andy, the barista, a man wearing sunglasses — indoors, unironically — and reminds himself that there are  _ other coffee shops _ in the FiDi area. 

Which is a moot point, really, because none of those coffee shops are as good as Andy’s.

Patrick discovered this a couple of years ago, when his usual coffee shop was closed for renovation and Patrick, in the midst of the most intellectually and emotionally demanding hostile takeover he’d ever orchestrated in his  _ life _ , hadn’t slept in four days. Craving caffeine and air that wasn’t processed in equal measure, Patrick figured a coffee run was the perfect opportunity to combine the two. He’d staggered through the door, more eye bag than actual man, and croaked, “How much espresso can you put in a cup, legally speaking.” Andy eyed him from behind his sunglasses and lifted a cardboard cup the size of Patrick’s  _ head _ and said, “Biggest is twenty-four ounces.” And he made Patrick a five shot cup with extra hot oat milk and a dash of cardamom and Patrick drank it and it was  _ so good _ he almost wept at Andy’s feet. So now he’s forced to come back, every day, like he’s seeking out his dealer on a street corner. Which, in another life, he might well be. But this is twenty-first century corporate America and everyone’s terrified of random drug testing so Patrick sticks with caffeine, thanks awfully, and doesn’t think about panic attacks and arrhythmia while he sucks it back like nectar. 

“The usual?” Andy asks him when he reaches the front of the line. 

Patrick nods and stares listlessly at the vegan brownies on the counter. They do nothing to improve his mood, which is sour, because Patrick hasn’t been sleeping well for the past week and three days. Which, in the interest of science and disclosure and all that crap, is exactly one week and  _ four  _ days since Patrick fucked Pete. 

No, that’s not strictly true: Patrick _was fucked_ by Pete. Pinned down and helpless and so fucking _desperate_ and, after that — after sex that made him come so hard he thought he saw the Virgin Mary in the pattern on his pillowcase — Patrick is _supposed_ to relax. Patrick is _supposed_ to be calm and collected and _chill._ Instead, Patrick can’t think about anything but Pete and Pete’s hands and Pete’s dick. Patrick is masturbating himself into carpal tunnel syndrome because all he can think about is Pete fucking him _again._

For the first couple of days, this was a minor inconvenience. Patrick sought a pragmatic resolution in the form of the high-res, high-class porn saved to his laptop. Patrick laid in his bed with his eyes closed and his fingers wrapped around his cock, imagining they were longer, darker, squeezing and rubbing and gasping Pete’s name. With a dick chafed to a burn and a sore wrist, Patrick’s forced to accept the truth: This is not the void he’s looking for. 

Patrick’s tried NyQuil and Ambien and sweet oaty drinks concocted by professionals to soothe him to sleep. He’s soaked in lavender bath bubbles and tried meditating and reading worthy books by boring white men and nothing has  _ worked. _

Before Patrick met Pete, he thought the worst part of his day was lying awake at night, fretting about work. Now, he lies awake at night thinking about  _ Pete  _ and panicking that, by thinking about Pete, he’s  _ not _ fretting about work. There’s a lot of panic, both general and specific. The circles under his eyes seem tattooed there. He would exchange his annual bonus for a solid six hours of sleep. 

_ “Patrick!” _ Andy says, sharply, like this isn’t the first time he’s said it, and Patrick jolts and sends a tray of fair trade, locally made biscotti crashing to the ground. 

“Sorry,” Patrick mutters, barely reacting as he takes his coffee from the counter. 

“Are you okay?” Andy asks, and it might be the longest sentence Andy’s ever spoken to Patrick that doesn’t concern his coffee order. Patrick’s attracting the attention of New York City baristas, who’re as close to the front line as it’s possible to get and therefore deal with _all the weirdness_ , so Patrick’s forced to assume that he looks as terrible as he feels.

Patrick blinks heavily. It takes longer to open his eyes than he would like. “I’m fine,” he says robotically, and he takes a big, mouth-scalding swig of his coffee. “I’m absolutely fine.”

“You look.” Andy waves his hand from side to side, like this is all he needs to say. “You know?”

“No?” Patrick says, confused. Then, he realises he’s squeezing the cup so hard that boiling coffee is spilling over the rim and onto his hand. “Oh,” he says, confused, as survival instinct kicks in and he drops the coffee cup to the floor. It explodes and coats the hems of his light gray herringbone pants with liquid the same temperature as Eta Carinae. “Shit.”

“Jesus Christ, Patrick,” Andy says, sounding alarmed. “No — No, don’t try to clean it. Just. Come back here. Matt? Take the line?”

Patrick finds himself in the kitchen of the coffee shop, his hand plunged under cold running water while Andy fusses with a first aid kit. Sometimes, Patrick thinks he’s a functioning grown up with a professional job and a mortgage to prove it. Then, somehow, he’s thinking about some passably good dick and giving himself third degree burns in an indie coffee shop. 

His life has this distressing habit of turning into a fucking  _ Kafka _ novel. 

“I’m not going to sue you,” he tells Andy, with deep and enduring earnestness. “Just so you know.”

Andy looks at him curiously. “Why would you sue me?”

“I don’t know,” Patrick shrugs. “It’s what people do, isn’t it? They do something stupid and then they sue someone else. I won’t do that.”

Andy looks at Patrick’s scalded hand and pats him dry with paper towels. He begins applying a thin layer of aloe vera, like Patrick is a small child with a skinned knee and not a grown man registered in a professional capacity with, like,  _ many  _ international finance bodies. 

“New York’s a weird place sometimes,” Andy observes. Then he looks up, frowning at Patrick. “Is everything okay, man?”

Patrick’s so startled by this question that he almost knocks over the first aid kit. He’s not used to people caring about him. Well, aside from his mother, but she’s a thousand miles away in Chicago  _ and  _ she doesn’t have Skype so she can’t look at him and tell him he’s getting too thin — which he probably is — or that he looks tired — which he  _ definitely _ does — so Patrick isn’t, exactly, prepared to answer a question about his emotional wellbeing. Having someone take the time to ask him if he’s  _ okay _ only serves to remind him that he’s not, and no one really cares either way, and that’s… It’s for the best, really, because all Patrick wants to do when he thinks about his professional life is cry, and his personal life is a loop of sleeping at his desk or masturbating in front of his TV, so that’s not great either.

Progress Report: Everything is fucking  _ awful. _

“It’s just work stuff,” Patrick says. Then he adds, quickly, “Not that I’m  _ struggling  _ with work stuff! I’m really good at work stuff. It’s just I have eighty-seven different deadlines and I’ve made some really basic mistakes and now my boss is starting to notice. And. I’m… not sleeping well.”

No thanks to Pete Wentz, who couldn’t even fuck Patrick into half a week of restful sleep. Patrick’s thought about heading out to Midtown or SoHo and finding someone —  _ anyone _ — to suck his dick in a nightclub bathroom but he’s too exhausted to try. The problem with a coping mechanism is it only helps if it  _ works. _ Otherwise, it’s just an unhealthy habit. Like knuckle-cracking or fingernail-biting. Or crystal meth. Patrick presses his unburnt knuckles into his temple and groans. 

Andy smiles wryly. “Maybe you should lay off the caffeine.” 

Patrick laughs. “What? And plunge you into a cycle of credit card debt, loan sharks and bankruptcy? Do I look like the kind of guy who could live with that?”

“I have  _ other _ customers, you know, people who  _ don’t  _ knock over my biscotti and throw coffee all over the floor,” Andy says with no real heat behind it.

“Sorry. About, like,  _ all _ of that. I just feel like…” And here, Patrick trails off because he can’t tell  _ Andy _ how he feels. “It doesn’t matter. I can pay for what I dropped.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Andy says. “It’s biscotti, not the Elgin marbles.”

“It’s  _ good _ biscotti, though,” Patrick says. Then, he catches sight of his watch and bolts to his feet. “Fuck, I need to get going. Thanks, though. For the aloe, and, like, for not freaking out that I trashed your coffee shop.”

“Patrick,” Andy says, and Patrick turns to look back at him. “There’s an open mic night. Tonight, in the coffee shop. You should stop by. Drink some coffee, listen to some terrible music.”

Patrick laughs hollowly. “Thanks, I might,” he says, knowing he absolutely won’t.

“You won’t. You work too hard,” Andy tells him. 

Patrick shrugs. “I work the required amount for my chosen profession.”

“Hmm,” Andy says, and leaves it at that. 

Patrick leaves the coffee shop with a fresh paper cup of coffee and walks to his office where he slinks to his desk and hopes that no one notices it’s after eight and he’s officially twenty minutes late. Joe gives him a bright smile that turns sympathetic so quickly that Patrick knows he looks like shit on a corporate banking level. He drops eye contact and slides down into his desk chair like he can sink through it via the process of cellular osmosis. 

“Everything okay?” Joe asks lightly.

“Dandy,” Patrick says.

“You know, if you need me to help out with the Trinity account, I’m more than happy to. You can still take credit, I'm not going to—”

“That won’t be necessary, thank you.”

Joe looks at him curiously. “Did you hurt your hand?”

“It’s  _ fine,” _ Patrick snaps through gritted teeth. “Everything is  _ fine.” _

Patrick throws himself into answering emails and taking calls and he doesn’t even look up from his computer until well after the point that could be socially referred to as lunchtime. Officially, he hasn’t allowed Pete to disrupt his day  _ once  _ so far. He’s awarding himself  _ all _ the points and, also, a sandwich from the cafeteria because he’s  _ starving.  _

It happens when he’s slinking downstairs to see if any sad, dried-up sandwiches are left behind in catering. Patrick walks down the long corridor past seniority’s offices, the people with views over the jagged New York skyline and shiny brass nameplates on their doors. He almost makes it to the bank of elevators when Will Beckett pokes his head out of his office door. 

Patrick maintains eye contact but only briefly, lest Will fulfil his demonic prophecy and turn Patrick to stone. 

Will is — and here, Patrick has to pause. Will isn’t his boss. Not technically. Not if Patrick goes onto the company intranet and looks at the corporate structure. But Will  _ is _ the boss’s son, and that means he sits several stratas above Patrick on the company-wide layer cake. It means that, whatever Will says, Patrick has to pay attention, even if what Will says is wildly inaccurate. Patrick puts his head down, prays —  _ Not right now, not right now, please God not right now —  _ and speeds for the elevator. 

“Patrick? Have you got a minute?” Will calls, proving that there is no God, or there  _ is _ and Patrick is the punchline of a long-standing cosmic joke. 

Patrick freezes. He hopes that, like a T-rex, Will’s vision is based on movement. 

“Patrick?” Will says again. So, clearly not. 

“Yes?” Patrick says cautiously. He’s still optimistic that this might be quick. 

“Step into my office,” Will says, with a big, friendly smile. The kind of big friendly smile generally offered by great white sharks. The kind of big, friendly smile offered by great white sharks right before they swallow an unsuspecting diver whole.

“I was going to get lunch,” Patrick says, trembling only a little. 

So unconcerned is Will by Patrick’s mealtime scheduling that he’s already walking away. “It won’t take long,” he calls back over his shoulder. Which isn’t reassuring, because ‘you’re fired’ takes very little time to say out loud. 

Patrick looks at the elevator and wonders how it might feel to give Will the finger, ride downstairs and never look back. Patrick looks at the nearest window and wonders how it might feel to throw himself through it. Patrick looks at Will and sighs and follows him into his office. It’s a very nice office, with a large desk and a wide chair and a leather chesterfield behind a low designer coffee table. Will sits behind his desk and doesn’t invite Patrick to sit down, so Patrick hovers awkwardly and shoves his hands into his pockets. 

“Patrick,” Will says. 

Patrick lifts his eyebrows. “Yes.”

“Patrick,” Will says again, tapping his pen against his teeth. “Patrick, Patrick, Patrick.”

“Yes,” Patrick says, again. 

“The Trinity account,” Will says, and steeples his fingers in front of his mouth. 

Patrick says, “Uhuh,” to switch things up. 

Patrick looks at Will and Will looks back and licks his lips. Patrick let Will fuck him once. A misguided incident at an office party where they both drank too much free booze and then never spoke about it again. Will definitely remembers though, Patrick can tell. Will either wants to fuck Patrick again, or wants Patrick to  _ want _ Will to fuck him again. The magnitude of Will’s irritation suggests the latter: Patrick doesn’t think he’s good enough in bed for the former. Not that it matters. Neither of those things are going to happen in the foreseeable future either way. 

“How’s that going?” Will asks. 

Patrick shrugs delicately and, realising he looks weird standing in front of his boss saying nothing, he opens his mouth and says, “Good. Thanks.”

“Hmm,” Will hums, clicking his mouse a few times and frowning delicately. “You know, there’s a meeting with the shareholders coming up. It’d be a shame if you let this one slip at such a  _ crucial _ time for the company.”

The threat comes through loud and clear. Patrick straightens his spine and brings his heels together lightly and thinks  _ there’s no place like home. _ Nothing happens. Will sits, shark-like, behind his desk. 

“Nothing’s going to slip,” Patrick says firmly. “I have the figures and the presentation is good to go. The forecasts are top-notch. There’s literally nothing that can go wrong with this project, barring a total international financial collapse and if you know about one of  _ those,  _ be a pal and give a guy a tip-off.”

Patrick laughs heartily. Will does not.

“Hmm,” Will says again, tapping at his keyboard for a second. He looks up and smiles again. Patrick shudders and fights the urge to run. “So, you  _ didn’t _ forget to email Gerard with the portfolio figures yesterday?”

Immutable fact: Patrick  _ did,  _ in fact, forget to email Gerard yesterday. This is largely due to the fact that Patrick hasn’t slept in almost three days and he thinks he’s starting to hallucinate. 

“Oh,” Patrick says, blinking rapidly. “Maybe I—”

“Probably forgot, right?” Will says, still smiling. “I mean, you  _ did _ leave early, after all.”

Patrick left at nine p.m. That is not, by any normal parameter,  _ early. _ Unless you’re a hedge fund manager in which case nine p.m. is unforgivably early. A firing offence. A bonus-destroying force.

“Well. Yes,” Patrick says, resigning himself to sleeping at his desk, if he sleeps at all. “I’ll — I’m going to stay late tonight. You can chain me to the desk and  _ punish _ me with work.”

They both seem to realise how this sounds at the same moment. Patrick stares at a spot over Will’s head and is generally horrified by his own continued existence.

Will  _ beams _ at him. It feels like standing in the path of liquid magma. 

“Excellent! That’s good to hear. It’s good to catch up like this.”

Patrick backs out of the room so quickly he almost backflips over the couch. “Yep. Well, back to the coalface!  _ Great  _ catch up.  _ Super  _ helpful!”

“Patrick,” Will calls, when Patrick’s halfway to closing the door behind him, his chest burning with professional humiliation. Patrick peers back into the office warily.  _ “Don’t _ fuck up again.” Will doesn’t add ‘or else.’ This is because Will doesn’t have to. 

“No, sir,” Patrick says. He possibly  _ salutes. _

Patrick bolts for the employee bathroom, locks himself into a cubicle and drops onto the closed toilet seat. He drags his phone out of his pocket and calls up google and types, his thumbs darting over the keypad until he’s staring down the loaded barrel of a search bar that says  _ Pete Wentz NYC  _ and Patrick asks himself, honestly, if this is what’s become of his life. 

He bites his lip and bangs his head solidly against the stall wall once, twice, three times. He can’t believe he’s doing this, but he doesn’t have a choice. The mathematics of it are simple: Patrick has to see Pete again, has to _sleep_ _with_ Pete again, and then he’ll be okay. He needs to get Pete out of his system by getting Pete _into_ his body, and then everything can go back to normal and Patrick won’t lose his job, his apartment, his reputation. 

Patrick hits search and blinks down at the screen. 

It turns out, Pete owns a tattoo studio in Williamsburg.

“Oh,” he says, out loud.

Patrick’s so taken aback by this that he spends ten minutes staring at his phone and wondering if he’s gone temporarily illiterate. He looks, very hard, at the words  _ Pete Wentz, Clandestine Tattoos, Williamsburg _ and waits for them to change. They don’t. Patrick’s… surprised, that’s all. To discover Pete is a legitimate business owner maybe. It  _ shouldn’t  _ surprise him. Not really. Not to stereotype, but Pete looks  _ exactly  _ like someone who owns a tattoo studio in Williamsburg. 

Patrick makes an excuse to Joe about visiting the ER re: his burnt and blistering hand, then he slips out of his office and hails a cab like a fucking tourist. It shouldn’t take long, he reasons, to see Pete again and do whatever he has to do to get Pete out of his system. Then, Patrick’s free to go back to the office and work through the night on the Trinity account. See also: die of a stress-related aneurysm at his desk, probaby. 

Patrick’s never been to a tattoo studio in his life, so he’s not sure what to expect. It almost definitely involves dark alleys and bad ideas though. Like, Patrick’s eighty-percent sure that tattoo studios are an elaborate front for drug running and money laundering and the casual harvest of illegitimately obtained kidneys. So, he’s  _ not _ expecting a neat front door, painted rich emerald green with an honest to God brass  _ bell _ hung from the red brick wall. There’s a small sign that says  _ Clandestine Tattoos, _ and that’s the only reason Patrick knows he’s in the right place.

“Huh,” Patrick says, staring at the door. The door stares back and doesn’t offer any solution to Patrick’s sex-related quandry which means, by extension, that Patrick’s going to have to  _ open _ the door and go inside. 

To clarify: Patrick doesn’t want to do  _ either  _ of those things. But he  _ does _ want to see Pete. It’s a dilemma. 

When Patrick pushes the door open, the bell tinkles and two men look up from behind the front desk. They’re both  _ astonishingly _ handsome and Patrick feels overdressed and stuck up and — the guy nearest to him stands up — very, very  _ short. _

“Can I help you with anything?” the guy asks. The look he gives Patrick suggests he doubts it, but in a friendly way.

Patrick clears his throat and wishes that his pant legs weren’t dip dyed in Columbian blend. “Um,” he says, “I’m here to see Peter. Peter Wentz. It’s a, um. Business… meeting.”

Any lingering friendliness in Tall Dark and Brooding’s eyes evaporates immediately. The room becomes cold enough to qualify as refrigeration equipment. The guy folds his arms with a scowl so hard it feels spined. 

“Are you a bank manager?” he asks. 

Patrick processes this, chewing his lower lip. A postgrad degree from Harvard Business School isn’t prerequisite to work out the answer to this particular equation. Patrick  _ has _ a postgraduate degree from Harvard Business School, but that’s beside the point. Clearly, this man is used to bank managers appearing at the studio, or at least anticipates it as a possibility. Clearly, Pete’s tattoo studio isn’t the most financially viable business model in the New York City area.  _ Clearly, _ this is none of Patrick’s business.

Patrick thinks about his answer for a moment because, technically, he  _ is _ a manager and he  _ does _ work for a bank, but he’s not really a  _ bank manager.  _ Patrick doesn’t want this large, intimidating man to confuse the two and beat him to death with his own designer shoes.

“I’m not here to foreclose the place, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Patrick says eventually, which is a nice mixture of telling the truth and avoiding the question. “I just need to talk to Mr Wentz. He, uh. He’s giving me some… ink. That’s what our meeting’s about. My tattoo.”

The guy looks him up and down. “You’re having a meeting?” Patrick nods. “About your tattoo? You’re here for your tattoo meeting?”

Patrick nods faster. “Yes.” The two men share a look.

“I don’t think I know Mr Wentz,” the guy says. “Travis, do we know Mr Wentz?”

Travis is even more handsome than the first guy. He tips his head to one side and lets his eyes roll up, like he’s thinking very hard. He rubs his chin and stares off into the distance and makes a soft, non-committal  _ hmm _ sound. Patrick hasn’t worried about bullies since graduation but a decade of carefully repressed formative memories come flooding back in powerful waves of swirlies, wedgies and hurts donuts.

“Nope,” Travis says, letting the ‘p’ snap against his lips. “Never heard of him.”

“We’ve never heard of him,” Not-Travis tells Patrick. As if Patrick is hard of hearing. As if Patrick isn’t standing literally six feet from Travis.

“But the internet said…” Patrick says. 

“You shouldn’t trust what you read on the internet,” Gabe tells him sagely. 

“The internet is, like,  _ full _ of misinformation,” Travis agrees.

“You know,” Patrick says, “I’m a potential customer. This isn’t very professional of either of you. Your customer care skills suck. I’m a customer, and I feel very uncared for right now.”

“He says he doesn’t feel cared for,” Not Travis says to Travis. 

“So sad,” Travis says. 

“This makes us sad,” Not Travis tells Patrick, his mouth twisted into a sarcastic moue. “We’re both, like,  _ so _ sad. About that.”

Patrick looks at Not Travis. Not Travis blinks back at him. “Is he here or not?” Patrick asks.

“Who?” Travis and Not Travis say in unison, their grins smug and shit-eating. 

Patrick sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose and feels supremely fucking irritated. Which isn’t unusual, because he  _ always _ feels supremely fucking irritated when he has to take a cab into the  _ boroughs _ , and he’s still rankled by his conversation with Will and he just wants to talk to Pete, so he can convince himself that there’s nothing special about Pete  _ at all _ and then  _ carry on with his fucking life without Pete _ the way he’s supposed to.

He takes a deep breath. “Can I speak to Pete? Please? He’s a—” Patrick pauses, swallows, and prepares to tell a lie. “A friend of mine. And it’s really important that I talk to him.”

“I keep telling you, man,” Travis says. “We don’t know anyone named Pete.”

Patrick points to the paperwork on the wall behind Not Travis’s head. “His name is  _ literally _ on the licensing form. I can  _ see  _ it. Right there.”

Travis and Not Travis don’t say anything. This is because they are both assholes. They just stand there, staring at Patrick like he’s a curiosity or a circus animal or a beast with three heads. Before either of them can tell him  _ again _ that Pete doesn’t work here — see also:  _ lie _ from their stupid, handsome  _ faces _ — a back door swings open. 

It’s Pete. 


	5. Chapter 5

Like,  _ obviously _ it’s Pete. Who else would arrive in the middle of Patrick’s trial-by-angry-associate if not fucking  _ Pete? _ Pete is looking down at something shiny and metallic in his hands, so Patrick takes a moment to look at him and slow his suddenly-racing heart. 

“Gabe,” Pete says, sounding exasperated but fond, “I swear to God, the next time we have a bleeder, you can—” Pete looks up and sees Patrick and drops the metallic, shiny thing onto the tiled floor with a clatter. “Oh,” Pete says, his wide and sexy mouth slightly open. “Shit.”

Patrick nurtured a hope that Pete would be… disappointing on second viewing. He’s not. Pete is astonishingly handsome.

Pete’s dressed in another muscle tank, tight black jeans, a Clandestine snapback, and a pair of blue surgical gloves that Patrick didn’t know he was into until the second he sees them on Pete. He’s shockingly attractive. Like, so good-looking that he’s not so much outside of Patrick’s usual league as he is outside of Patrick’s actual  _ species.  _ There’s no way Pete’s going to want to lay a blue-gloved hand on Patrick in the cold light of day. Patrick stares and considers running out of the door and into the path of the passing Manhattan Avenue traffic. It would solve all his problems, both professional and personal. 

The glare Pete levels at Patrick has the force of a category five hurricane. His fury is such that it ranks its own Hazard Classification. If Patrick had to pick a verb to describe Pete right now, it would not be ‘thrilled.’ Like, at all. He looks the polar opposite of thrilled. He looks… pissed. Which is  _ unfair,  _ because Patrick didn’t  _ mean _ to piss Pete off,  __ it’s just that Patrick’s sort of a social disaster and now everything is awkward and this —  _ this _ — is why Patrick Does Not Date. This is why he comes with a glowing neon sign that says Danger Ahead, Proceed With Caution. This is why Pete should tell him to fuck off and go about his day and forget Patrick exists.

Patrick has a huge project due on the Trinity account next week and if he doesn’t relax soon, he’s going to pop several crucial blood vessels. He  _ really hopes _ that Pete won’t tell him to fuck off. 

“Good afternoon, Mr Wentz,” Patrick says, because formalities. Formalities will alleviate the social awkwardness.

Pete’s scowl ramps up to DefCon 1. Patrick sweats tidally, shoves his hands into his pockets and tries to make himself as insignificant as possible.

“This guy says he knows you,” Travis says helpfully, which breaks the intense, Marlon Brando stare thing Pete has going on, but only so he can twist his mouth into a sneer. It’s a painfully sexy sneer though, so Patrick catalogs it as possible future masturbation material. 

“Never met him before in my life,” Pete says flatly. 

Which, honestly? Patrick resents that. He  _ sucked this guy’s dick.  _ Did a good job of it, too. 

“He says you’re best friends,” Gabe says, cupping his hands under his chin, palms down. 

Patrick  _ didn’t _ say that. “I didn’t say  _ best friends.” _

Pete‘s sneer grows exponentially. “Does he  _ look _ like one of my friends?”

“He looks like he sells insurance,” Travis says, looking Patrick up and down.  _ “Dental _ insurance,” he adds, like this is much, much worse.

Patrick says, “Listen,” but no one does. They’re too busy casting aspersions on Patrick’s good name. 

“He looks like a divorce attorney,” Pete says. Patrick finds this unfair, because Pete told him, very specifically, that he  _ didn’t _ look like an attorney. 

“He looks like the disgraced son of a failed Midwestern Republican nominee,” Gabe says.

“He looks like Dick Cheney’s dog walker,” Travis says.

“Or Dick Cheney’s  _ dog,” _ Gabe snickers. 

“Or, like, if Satan was a bank manager,” Pete says.

_ “I _ said bank manager,” Gabe tells Pete gleefully. 

“Yeah, the douchiest bank manager,” Pete agrees. 

Patrick thinks that’s sort of fair, but he also thinks Pete is an asshole. “That’s sort of fair,” he tells Pete. “But also, you’re an asshole.”

“Oh  _ I’m _ the asshole?” Pete snaps, looking furious. “After what you did — You know what? I’m not having this conversation with you. What’re you even  _ doing _ here you fucking crazy stalker!”

“Look, you’re the one who told me your full name. This place is, like,  _ the first hit _ on Google when I typed in your name. You need to think about your own personal safety and security. You’re lucky I’m  _ not _ a weirdo,” Patrick points out. 

Pete hasn’t taken off the gloves and Patrick’s having all kinds of erotic, inapproptiate thoughts about them. About Pete’s hands generally, actually. Look,  _ you _ try standing in a tattoo studio in Williamsburg with Pete Wentz and his  _ hands _ and see how well  _ your _ concentration holds up. 

“Yep, I’m feeling very reassured about your weirdo status right now. Fucking  _ stalker _ , _ ” _ Pete says. He actually uses the loser cough for the last word, like this is a noughties teen movie and he’s Ryan fucking Reynolds. 

Travis and Gabe look like this is the greatest moment of their careers thus far. 

“Oh my God,” Gabe says. “This is him, isn’t it? This is the guy!”

“Shut up,” Pete tells him. “This is  _ not _ the guy.”

Gabe looks at Travis. “It’s the guy.”

“Totally the guy,” Travis nods. 

Fuck. Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck.  _ Gabe and Travis know about the whole Sex Thing and now Patrick has to walk himself to the nearest Post Office and ship himself to  _ Scotland _ or something, so that he never has to risk looking either of them in the eye, ever again. Whatever. No big deal. 

Pete huffs. “Hey, how's the job market looking these days?”

Gabe snaps his mouth closed, mimes turning a key. He doesn’t stop smirking, though. That’s annoying, but Patrick has other things to be annoyed about. Example: he hasn’t slept for more than two hours at a stretch since Pete…  _ bewentzed _ him. Patrick is exhausted and irritated and fucking up at work and this is  _ all Pete’s fault _ ergo this is Pete’s problem to fix. 

This isn’t something Patrick feels comfortable discussing in front of the Grady twins, so he clears his throat and inclines his head slightly towards the door Pete just emerged from and he says, “I’d like to talk to you for a minute.” 

Pete looks down at his watch then gives Patrick a slow, Jim Halpert blink. 

“And… go,” he says. He goes back to looking at his watch with a fingertip pressed to his lips. 

“What?” Patrick says, after a pause. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

“Fifty-five seconds,” Pete says. 

“Is this foreplay?” Gabe asks Travis. “It feels like foreplay. Fuck, this is like Animal Planet.”

“Don’t get involved,” Travis replies. “Or his mom won’t take him back, or… something.”

Patrick feels grumpy and outnumbered. He still can’t stop staring at Pete’s hands. “God, you’re ridiculous. You know that, right?”

“Fifty seconds,” Pete sings, tapping his watch with a rubbered fingertip. “You’re wasting a lot of time here, Wall Street.”

“Doesn’t look like Pete’s type,” Travis observes. 

“Short, blond and twinky? Seems  _ exactly _ Pete’s type,” Gabe says, sounding amused. 

Patrick decides he doesn’t like Gabe very much. 

“Forty-five,” Pete says. “Make it fast, Wall Street.”

And Patrick just — he loses it. His life has been a ridiculous mess for the past two weeks, okay? Longer, if he’s honest, the past five years spent chasing promotion and outrunning the market and, seriously, it’s not  _ possible _ to outrun capitalism. He’s exhausted. He’s travelled all the way out to fucking  _ Brooklyn _ and all he wants is for his life to go back to how it was before he met Pete. The world is moving too fast. It feels like running on a treadmill after too much scotch and soda and Patrick wants to get off. In the sense that he wants to get off the treadmill, obviously, but also, he thinks, looking at Pete’s mouth, he just wants to  _ get off _ and  _ sleep _ and  _ not think.  _

_ “In private!”  _ Patrick roars. The studio falls silent. The traffic passes by outside, someone laughs on the sidewalk and Pete’s abandoned Warren G playlist hums on in the back of the shop. But no one moves. No one breathes. Gabe and Travis and Pete stare at Patrick and Patrick closes his eyes and listens to the throb of his pulse against his eardrums. “I want to talk to you in private,” he says again. 

Patrick opens his eyes and that’s a bad idea because Pete’s glaring at him with this  _ intensity _ that licks wicked heat down Patrick’s spine. 

Pete rolls his eyes and jerks his chin towards the back room. “Through there,” he says, like he can read minds, which, like, hopefully he cannot. There are things in Patrick’s head that no man needs to see. “Hurry up.”

Pete locks the door behind them and turns up his sound system and Patrick says, “Ummm. So.” 

“What the  _ fuck,  _ man,” Pete snaps. “What’re you  _ doing  _ here?”

“I was in the neighbourhood, and I thought I’d stop by,” Patrick lies.

“Bullshit.” Pete pulls off his gloves and tosses them into the trash. Patrick tracks the movement mournfully. 

“I think I owe you an apology,” Patrick says, because apologising might make Pete more amenable, even if Patrick doesn’t think he has anything to apologise for. “I thought we could talk.” 

Pete huffs through his nose. “I don’t want to talk to you _. _ Do you see the dilemma, Wall Street?”

“I know we got off on the wrong foot, but this is important,” Patrick says. He’s very sweaty. Like, much sweatier than he imagined he was going to be. This all seemed much cleverer when he was sitting on a closed toilet seat in Manhattan. 

“So,” Pete says. “Just to clarify, you take me home and have me fuck you, and that’s nice. We’re having a nice time, right?”

Patrick tries to speak, gets as far as, “Okay,  _ but,”  _ and then Pete cuts over him, so the question is rhetorical, presumably.

“Then, before the lube’s dry, you tell me you don’t date, you don’t want my number and you  _ kick me out. Then,” _ Pete’s voice slides up a clear octave, _ “ _ and slow down if I’m losing you because I am  _ so _ fucking  _ confused _ right now _ , _ you stalk me and tell me you need to talk to me. Are you out of your fucking  _ mind?” _

When he says it like  _ that,  _ Pete starts to sound like he might have a point. Not that Pete’s hurt feelings are Patrick’s problem. No, Patrick’s  _ problem _ is crippling work anxiety and immeasurable levels of stress, but Pete may have the  _ solution _ to Patrick’s problem. So, like, playing nice is probably a good idea. 

“I’m sorry your feelings were hurt,” Patrick says gravely. “But I do really need to talk to you.”

“Go ahead and talk,” Pete says.

“I’m trying,” Patrick points out. “You’re being very aggressive. Are you always this aggressive?”

“Yes. Basically always. You look like shit, by the way,” Pete says. Then his expression falters. “Oh, fuck. You’re not here to tell me you’re patient zero for some kind of horrible disease, are you? Do you have chlamydia? Because I do  _ not _ have time for that.”

Patrick scowls. “No, I do  _ not _ have fucking  _ chlamydia, _ asshole. And even if I  _ did, _ do you think I’d come to your shady fucking tattoo parlour and tell you, so you could murder me and smuggle me out of here in biohazard bags? Email, douchebag. It’s a thing that exists.”

Pete’s brow furrows. It’s a sexy furrow. “Yeah? So, what  _ are _ you doing here? Look around, I’m not exactly T.A.I. Holdings’ target demographic.”

Patrick looks around. There’s a tattoo chair and a stool, flanked by an instrument table. One wall is lined with shelves and drawers and the others are covered in framed prints of artwork and smiling idiots showing off the indelible marker punched into their skin. A low leather couch is pushed against one wall, a sketchbook abandoned on the cushions. Patrick thinks he sees the flannel shirt Pete wore to the club hanging on a peg on the door and his knees go weak at the memory. There’s so much  _ Pete _ in the room it’s like trial by fire. Patrick is burning up. 

Patrick clears his throat and decides that, while honesty is demonstrably not always the best policy, it’s the only thing he has. “Look, the thing is, I’m fucking up at work since you fucked me,” he says. “And that’s like, seriously  _ not the point _ of what we did. It’s supposed to knock me out for a couple weeks, help me relax, instead you’re in my fucking head and I don’t know how to get you out.”

Pete looks unimpressed. “Most people use NyQuil when they can’t sleep, not dick. Using dick to help you sleep is, like, a guaranteed way to get yourself murdered.”

“Most people don’t handle billion-dollar short term hedge fund investments.”

“I’m failing to see how this is my problem, Wall Street.”

The continued use of the nickname is a definite sign of attraction. If Pete didn’t want to fuck him again, he wouldn’t keep saying it. There’s an advantage here, Patrick just has to press it. Patrick shifts his weight from one hip to the other and rubs a hand through his hair.

“I have a use for you,” he says. He realises how this might sound to a non-banker and corrects himself quickly: “A proposition. Mutually beneficial. Win-win.”

Pete looks him over slowly and says, “Uh- _ huh. _ And what might that be?”

“We start hooking up,” Patrick says. Pete’s eyebrows begin a leisurely climb toward his hairline. “Hear me out. What you did to me was – I mean, it was fucking incredible, you’ve got a real, uh. A real talent. For that. And I think you enjoyed it too.”

Pete looks at him from across the studio, his eyes dark and inscrutable. His curiosity is palpable. Patrick looks up at the ceiling but he can feel Pete’s eyes tracking the movement of his throat as he swallows. Pete doesn’t say a word, just stares at Patrick while Patrick stares at the ceiling and wishes Pete would say something. Anything. He’ll take a horrible joke at this point, as long as it breaks the tense quiet.

“So,” Patrick says, punching a hole in the silence. “What do you think?”

Pete  _ laughs _ at him. “I think you should get the fuck out of here. I’m not a fucking  _ commodity _ you can buy up.”

Patrick’s mouth hangs open. He stares at Pete with undisguised shock. “But,” he says, stupidly. “But. But, like, hear me out—”

“Go away,” Pete sing songs. 

Patrick huffs. “This is ridiculous, I can pay your cab fare if that’s—”

That sparks something in Pete, some furious anger that makes his fists clench as he takes three aggressive steps toward Patrick across the room. Patrick takes two hasty steps back. This is not a reasonable reaction to the perfectly reasonable offer of no-strings-attached sex. Pete glares at Patrick like Patrick just suggested they go into the puppy-kicking business together. Patrick stammers out a few nonsensical syllables but English seems to have deserted him as a concept and his French, although  _ satisfaisant,  _ probably won’t be effective on Pete.

“I’m not a fucking prostitute,” Pete hisses. “Get out of my fucking studio you arrogant, egocentric  _ prick.”  _

Patrick doesn’t move. He can’t. He’s frozen, rooted to the spot and compelled to meet Pete’s angry stare, hypnotised, a mouse with a snake. Pete is close enough that Patrick can feel his warmth, smell Pete’s cologne and the faint tang of antiseptic clinging to his skin. 

“I didn’t,” Patrick starts. “I didn’t mean—”

Pete leans in so close that their noses almost brush, that his breath mists against Patrick’s mouth as he snarls. “Someone like you can suck my fucking  _ dick.” _

A bright well of desire springs low in Patrick’s gut.

It’s not an invitation. Patrick understands that on an academic level, at least. It’s hard and it’s brittle and it’s  _ clearly  _ an insult. But Patrick’s slow lizard brain unfurls and stretches and Patrick  _ sinks to his knees _ in front of Pete.

His mouth presses to Pete’s zipper, his breath warm and urgent against the denim. Pete makes a sound. A gutterral, rumbling groan scraped from his chest. He scrunches a hand into Patrick’s hair and tugs, up and up, until Patrick is looking at him. Patrick curls his hands around Pete’s thighs and hangs on for dear life.

“Wall Street,” Pete says, like a question mark. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Patrick nuzzles closer. “I think — I think I’m sucking your dick.”

Pete shudders, ripples from his crown to his toes and Patrick feels Pete’s dick jump. “Fuck. These one-eighties are going — to fucking —  _ kill _ me.”

Patrick blinks. He rubs his cheek over Pete’s junk and, his voice wrecked, he whispers, “I think I like it when you tell me what to do.” 

Pete takes a deep breath and looks up. From this angle, Patrick can see the sharp edges of Pete’s jawbone, the way his throat contracts as he swallows. Patrick opens his mouth with veneration and wraps his lips over the denim-straining head of Pete’s cock and looks up through the fan of his lashes.

“Jesus Christ.” Pete breathes out slowly. He cards his fingers through Patrick’s hair. Patrick doesn’t move. His dick feels caged and restless in his pants, twitching up against his button and zipper as he waits for Pete to say something. Pete rubs his thumb lightly over Patrick’s bottom lip. Patrick’s whine is embarrassing.

“Yeah?” Pete says softly. Patrick nods. “Alright, do it. Suck me off.”

Patrick stares at Pete’s eyes and Pete’s mouth and Pete’s chest, belt buckle, cock pressing rudely against his jeans. Impulsively, Patrick leans in and grabs Pete’s zipper between his teeth and Pete’s hands tighten in Patrick’s hair and he takes a glorious, gasping breath as Patrick tugs it down and noses gently at Pete’s cock through his boxers. “You’ll have to get the button for me,” Patrick says, and Pete laughs like it’s been punched out of him, his hands shaking as he pops the button and reaches into his shorts. He lifts out his dick and rests the hot and swollen tip against Patrick’s lower lip. A fat pearl of precome beads onto Patrick’s tongue.

“You have no idea how fucking sexy you look right now,” Pete says seriously. 

For the first time, Patrick gets it. He feels desirable under someone else’s touch. He opens his mouth and looks up into Pete’s wide and startled eyes as he tastes the tip with slow popsicle strokes of his tongue. He gluts himself on Pete’s taste, paying no mind to the throb of his own dick, content to suck and lick and swirl his tongue as Pete makes joyful, greedy little sounds above him. Pete has one hand locked in Patrick’s hair, the other tucked behind his own head. Patrick pulls off to scrape his teeth over Pete’s thighs and leave soft, sucking kisses over Pete’s hip bones. 

Pete squeezes Patrick’s hair in his hand and hisses, “Don’t fucking tease, Wall Street.”

Patrick takes him down again, tastes the rich and salty dicktaste of Pete bright at the back of his tongue. Patrick swallows Pete’s cock until it nudges the back of his throat, until Pete’s taste stains his mouth like a crime scene, until Patrick can’t breathe and he chokes and Pete pulls him back, slowly, by his hair. Then Patrick slides back down again. He feels slutty and wanted and aching for Pete’s touch, for the taste of Pete’s orgasm vivid in his mouth. Pete’s noises are louder now, sharper and more desperate, his hand in Patrick’s hair locked in a fist and Patrick thinks... _ nothing. _ Patrick thinks of nothing at all and it’s so perfect, so  _ liberating _ and then Pete whispers, “You fucking — You amazing thing,” and comes on a pained breath and paints Patrick’s mouth and chin and his carefully knotted tie with thick white ropes. 

Patrick licks Pete clean and wants to thank him for it but, before he can, Pete blinks and looks at Patrick, eyes unfocused, and says, “Okay, Wall Street. Your turn.”

They fall back onto the couch together, Pete on top and between Patrick’s spread thighs. Honestly, this is Patrick’s favourite place for Pete to be. He’d like to invite Pete to purchase stocks and shares in the commodity, to set up a properly managed investment portfolio. Pete wrestles with Patrick’s button and zipper and pulls out his dick with lusty abandon.

And, oh. Oh, yes. This is so much better. Patrick grabs Pete by the ears and hangs on like Pete is the last possible anchor and New York might blow away at any moment. Patrick’s so hard. So painfully red and thick and swollen and he makes a soft, pitiful noise in the back of his throat as Pete rubs his thumb from base to tip and back again. 

Pete looks up, his amber eyes sparkling and says, “I’m gonna fucking  _ end _ you. Hands up.”

The words ring through Patrick’s head until the roots of his teeth feel like they’re vibrating. He puts his hands over his head and Pete presses a quick, soft kiss to his mouth. Then he kisses Patrick again, slow and lingering and utterly perfect. Patrick curls a hand around the back of Pete’s neck and bites sharp, fevered kisses to Pete’s mouth.

“I can’t suck you off if you won’t stop kissing me,” Pete whispers, laughing into Patrick’s mouth. 

Patrick winds his legs around Pete’s waist and presses up. “Please,” he breathes. “Please, please,  _ please.” _

Patrick melts into the kiss, lets Pete lick his mouth open like he can part Patrick down the middle and they kiss and kiss and kiss as Pete’s hands drift, one locking over both of Patrick’s, the other twisting down to wind around Patrick’s hard, hard cock. Patrick sighs and moans and whispers “Please,” and “More,” and “Fuck yes, like that,” and Pete laughs into Patrick’s mouth, flicking his callused thumb over the quivering, nervy tip of Patrick’s erection until Patrick comes with a sob, staining his pants and Pete’s pants and the hem of his crisp, white shirt, straining up against Pete’s hold as Pete holds him tight and whispers “Shh,” and “I know, sweetheart,” and “I’ve got you,” and it’s honestly — _honestly_ — the most intense, the _loveliest_ orgasm Patrick’s had in his life. 

Patrick sinks down into the couch and  _ trembles _ as Pete kisses his mouth, his nose, the corners of his eyes and the soft velvet tags of his earlobes. He watches, eyes half-closed, as Pete licks come from his fingers, palm and wrist.

Pete touches him, just under his chin, and whispers, “Hey, you. Anyone home?”

Patrick blinks heavily. “Hey yourself,” he says softly. 

“So,” Pete says, and Patrick waits for Pete to tell him to get dressed, to kick him out of the shop, to tell him that this was an aberration and not an agreement. Pete doesn’t say any of that. Instead, Pete smiles his crooked smile and says, “You’re the strangest hedge fund manager I’ve ever met. But I think maybe I’m sort of into it.”

Patrick smiles back, all bed hair and bruised under eyes. “Met a lot of hedge fund managers?”

“More than you’d think,” Pete says. There’s a wet, pearly stain on his shirt and Patrick touches it with a fingertip.

“Sorry about that,” he says.

Pete shakes his head. “Don’t mention it. It was worth it.” He looks like he can’t quite believe he’s saying that. 

They lie together on the couch, Pete stretched out over Patrick, nibbling his mouth, his throat, the underside of his jaw. Patrick stares at the ceiling and waits to regain sensation in his fingers and toes. 

“So, I don’t have any more appointments today,” Pete says, tracing his thumb across Patrick’s lips. Patrick has no idea what this has to do with him until Pete stands and grabs a hoodie from the back of the door and drapes it carefully over Patrick. “Sleep,” he says simply. “You look like you need it. I’ve got a couple sketches to finish up, so I’ll be, like, right here if you need me. I’ll wake you when I lock up.”

“I have to get back to work,” Patrick protests, visions of exit meetings dancing in his head. He has no idea why pete continues to be nice to him when Patrick is so resolutely  _ awful. _

“You know,” Pete says, picking up his sketchbook and moving to a tiny desk in the corner. “You should work to live, not the other way around.”

“I love my job,” Patrick says. “It’s all I’ve wanted to do since I left college.” He waits for Pete to ask which college he went to. Pete, notably, does not. Patrick sighs. “I love my job.”

It’s like if he says it enough then it has to be true. If the only thing standing between success and failure is a positive mental attitude then keep smiling, right? Or keep showing those teeth and pretending it’s a smile — no one fucks with a predator. 

Pete shrugs and looks at Patrick, his elbow on the desk, his chin on his fist. “Love isn’t love if it kills you.”

“I’m not a writer, but isn’t that the creative definition of love?” Patrick says lightly, swinging his legs over the side of the couch and tucking his soft, sticky cock back into his pants. There’s come on his zipper, his shirt, on the knot of his tie and possibly in his hair. 

“Most love stories are bullshit,” Pete says, with all the authority of a Liberal Arts major, turning back to his sketchbook. 

Patrick mulls this over as he straightens his tie in the mirror, as he wipes the sweat from his brow and arranges his waistcoat over the stain on his shirt. Patrick’s thirty soon, financially secure in a job he hates, and lonelier than he’s ever been in his life. The only sound in the room is the scratch of Pete’s pencil against paper, the low hum of the air conditioning, their breathing. 

“I could come back,” Patrick says, suddenly. His voice punches into the silence like a fist and they both jump. “Like, after work. When you finish up. Maybe we could grab some dinner. I know a great little place near my office.”

It’s not an offer of dinner, not really. What he means is that he wants Pete to fuck him again, sooner rather than later and this will be easier when they’re hands-down-pants staggering distance from Patrick’s apartment. What he means is that the blowjob/handjob/brain-frying orgasm  _ thing _ was basically a wet signature on the contract of their agreed sexual arrangement.

“I can’t tonight,” Pete says. “I’ve got other plans.”

“Oh,” Patrick says, feeling foolish. “I — No, you’re right. Some other time, maybe.”

Pete flips a business card from a holder on his desk and leans back in his chair to hold it out to Patrick. When their fingers brush, it burns through Patrick’s circulatory system like sheet lightning. “My number,” Pete says, as though Patrick is the kind of socially-backward idiot who hasn’t encountered a business card in the wild before. “Maybe you could use it sometime. If you wanted to act like a normal person and text me next time you want some dick instead of acting like a fucking stalker.”

Patrick takes the card and smiles. “Thanks. I might.”

He’s feeling vulnerable and impulsive, so he leans down and brushes a kiss to the back of Pete’s neck, where Pete’s warm and soft and smells of laundry soap and skin. Pete reaches back and cups Patrick’s cheek. He turns his head and plants a soft, tender kiss on Patrick’s lips. “They’ll give you shit,” he says and Patrick fancies Pete’s actually  _ blushing. _ “On the way out? They’re assholes.”

“I think I’ll survive,” Patrick says. “Have fun tonight. I’ll call you.”

Pete smiles down at his sketchbook and says, “Sounds good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so the world is kind of crappy at the moment. We're all cooped up inside or else risking ourselves on the front lines as essential workers. We can't socialise. People are getting sick and we're all scared and everything seems kind of hopeless. But... we have fandom, right? We have this little community of amazing people and we can all help each other deal with this. 
> 
> You guys are the only thing getting me through this, and writing this fic is the only thing stopping me from climbing the walls. So, like, the biggest thank you for commenting and leaving kudos and just being awesome. If anyone wants to chat, I'm @sn1tchesandtalkers on tumblr :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/168268289@N03/49727820477/in/dateposted-public/)   
> 
> 
> This gorgeous artwork is by [the_chaotic_panda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_chaotic_panda/pseuds/the_chaotic_panda), not only an amazing artist but also an insanely talented writer who you should check out without delay! You can also find her on tumblr [here!](https://the-chaotic-panda.tumblr.com/) I'm so, so lucky to have such an awesome friend!

Patrick drowns himself in work for the next three days. 

He works solidly through the first night fueled by MSG-heavy Chinese takeout and instant coffee and the endorphin rush associated with really — like, _really_ — spectacular sex. 

The next day, he makes his presentation to the shareholders and they’re impressed and take him out for dinner to discuss possible future projects. Which sounds like fun but in reality it’s just more work with tiny portions of fussy food attached and Patrick’s not great at eating in public. Afterward, Patrick takes work home and flips through it in front of the TV, snatching a power nap over his financial forecasts before landing back at the office before seven, and Will smiles at him approvingly and Patrick feels competent and in control and...

Stressed. Okay. Patrick feels _alarmingly fucking stressed._

That’s the thing about working in finance. It’s a constant rollercoaster of yo-yoing blood pressure and caffeine pills taken in dosages not-at-all approved by the FDA and it never stops because the end of one project is the start of another and you’re only as good as last quarter’s figures and there’s always someone new rising up the ranks and nipping at your heels. Honestly, Patrick’s not sure what he _is_ without that caged butterfly feeling of panic just beneath his ribs. So, Patrick works and works and then he blinks and looks around and realises that it’s _Friday._

It’s Friday and the weekend is about to hit. The office crawls from its collective cave of financial forecasts and close examination of the FTSE 100 and blinks into the possibility of forty-eight hours of freedom. Patrick hates weekends, generally speaking. With the office closed, there’s nothing to do but lie on the couch in his sweats, watching reruns of Nailed It and eating cereal or ordering takeout because cooking for one is depressing. But _this_ Friday is even worse, because Patrick is hit with the solid realisation of fuck buddy abandonment. 

It’s _Friday_ and Pete hasn’t text him. 

Patrick stares suspiciously at his phone. Then he counts back, and realises he hasn’t received a non work-related text in over two weeks. For posterity, his last personal text was from his mom asking about Thanksgiving i.e. does he intend to spend it with his family, or alone in his apartment. The “again” was implied. He hasn’t replied yet because a) it’s _September_ and b) he’s going to say no, he doesn’t have time, then she’ll get upset and he’ll feel like the worst son in the states of New York _and_ Illinois. He doesn’t have time to dwell on the fact that no one else has felt the need to speak to him in a non work related capacity in _half a month._ Patrick’s going to die alone in his apartment and no one will even notice until his maintenance fees go unpaid. 

Maybe he should buy a cat. Pets are good company for lonely people and when he dies alone, it can eat his bloated, unlovable corpse. 

Anyway, all of Patrick’s work-related texts come through some kind of closely-guarded internal messaging system, not unlike the fucking Matrix, and Patrick has no idea if his phone is even receiving incoming texts from outside numbers. Pete could’ve been texting him pictures of his photogenic penis for the past three days and Patrick would have no idea. By extension, Pete will think _Patrick_ isn’t interested and Pete will find someone else and no one will call Patrick ‘Wall Street’ in that so-careless-it’s-caring way and this shouldn’t bother him but it does. 

Seriously, his life is a _mess._

“Joe,” Patrick says, rubbing his fingertip against the edge of his phone. 

Joe tips his head toward Patrick without actually taking his eyes off the screen. “Yeah?”

“Is your phone working?” Patrick asks. 

“Um, yeah. I think so,” Joe says, still looking at his screen. “Is yours not?”

“Hmm,” Patrick says, frowning. 

“You’re not getting your email?”

Patrick hesitates and feels silly. “No. My email is fine.”

“You’re not getting stock alerts?” 

“Yeah, no. I’m getting stock alerts,” Patrick says.

Joe is no longer looking at his computer screen because Joe is looking at Patrick with notable amusement. “So, your calls aren’t coming through?”

“My calls are fine,” Patrick grits out. 

“Hmm,” Joe says. The smirk on his face is knowing. Patrick regrets instigating this conversation. “So what, exactly, is wrong with your phone?”

 _There are no texts on it from a mediocre bassist,_ Patrick thinks. They sit in silence until Patrick can’t bear it any more and breaks. 

“There’s nothing wrong with my phone,” he says. He says it with _such_ duplicity. 

“Right,” Joe says, nodding. “I mean, that’s probably why you said it’s not working.”

“I didn’t say it’s not working,” Patrick says. Because he _didn’t._ He _inferred_ it’s not working. It’s not like he went to law school, but he thinks there’s a difference. “I have work to do,” he adds. “Be quiet.”

“Uh- _huh,”_ Joe says, still grinning. “Waiting for an important call?”

“No,” Patrick snaps. “I’m very busy and important. Go away.”

Patrick goes back to staring at his computer screen only this time he’s uncomfortably aware of Joe smirking at him. Patrick’s ears pink — an annoyance he doesn’t acknowledge as he flips through one of the folders on his desk and takes in nothing at all. 

His phone isn’t broken. Of course it’s not. His phone isn’t broken, it’s just that Pete hasn’t text him. Pete hasn’t text him because Pete isn’t interested and Patrick’s totally _embarrassing_ himself with his sexually nefarious _delusions_ because Pete’s fucked the functioning brain cells out of him. Patrick is now fundamentally broken. 

And it’s _fine._ It’s totally _fine_ because Patrick doesn’t even _want_ to sleep with stupid, handsome Pete. Patrick just needs to sleep with _someone, anyone_ to stop him feeling too busy, too stressed, too anxious. Patrick just _thought_ he might like to fuck Pete because Pete is good-looking and charming and pins Patrick down with his big, rough hands and makes Patrick lose half of his IQ points through his penis. Patrick sulks and browses the internet, definitely _not_ thinking about Pete, and stress-buys a rare Tom Waits vinyl and a pair of expensive noise-cancelling headphones to cheer himself up.

The gesture is pointless. He doesn’t feel any better at all.

It’s not until he’s going through his wallet for his credit card that he notices something stuffed between his black AmEx and his Trader Joe’s loyalty card. The crisp edge of a midnight blue business card with gold lettering: Pete Wentz, Clandestine Tattoos. A _cell phone_ number. Patrick stares into his wallet and starts to sweat. Patrick is not being ignored. He flicks a slow, accusatory glance at his phone. Pete hasn’t text him, he realises in a rush, because Pete _doesn’t have his number._

A slow trickle of relief tumbles down his spine, followed almost immediately by a searing rush of gut-knotting panic. 

“Oh, _fuck,”_ he says. Out loud. In his office. 

“Everything okay?” Joe asks mildly.

“Everything is _fine,”_ Patrick says, fumbling with his phone and the business card and hurling them both across his desk and basically into Joe’s lap. 

Joe, because he’s a normal, well-socialised human being, moves to pick them up. 

“Don’t touch that!” Patrick screeches — _Screeches!_ All the way up at the top of his vocal register! — as he lunges over his desk in pursuit. “That’s — it’s _private_ property!”

Joe blinks at Patrick. “Sure it is. This is completely normal. This is how normal people act.”

Patrick grabs the phone and the business card and stalks to the executive bathroom with all the dignity he can muster. Fun fact: it’s a very small amount of dignity. Trace levels of dignity. With the door locked behind him, he enters the number on the card and composes a message — _Hi, it’s Patrick. I’m not ignoring you!_ — and he hits send before he can overthink it. 

Of course, that sounds exactly like something someone who’s ignoring Pete would say, so Patrick has no choice but to begin overthinking it. 

Pete replies: _i thought you’d died. i thought i’d fucked you into a coma. i thought i’d have to tell your mom what happened. i checked the news, wall street. the NEWS._

Patrick laughs at that, out loud, the noise startling in the empty bathroom. He sends back, _You’re kind of a dick to me, you need to work on that. Session one: takeout and a movie at my place tonight?_

It’s not that he doesn’t want to go out in public with Pete. It’s just that. Well, it’s just that they’re _not_ dating, are they? Patrick doesn’t _need_ to book small, intimate tables in restaurants with bow tie-wearing wait staff because neither of them _needs_ to feel suitably romanced before they get down to the penetration aspect of their evening.

Pete doesn’t reply for long enough that Patrick starts to think that maybe Pete _does_ want candlelight and a leatherbound wine list and he’s halfway through composing a text to suggest the same — _Got a company table at Delmonico’s, if that’s more your scene —_ when his phone starts to vibrate with an incoming call. Patrick fat-fingers his way to answer it.

“Hi,” he breathes. 

“You want this dick, babe?” Pete purrs into the phone, his voice low and rough and edged through with a molten vein of sexiness. 

Patrick’s synapses crystallise, harden, shut down. He makes a thin, embarrassing sound. All the blood in his body wages a fierce battle over whether it intends to fill his dick or heat his face. Caught in the middle, an innocent victim of his own traitorous endocrine system, Patrick feels woozy and confused and very aroused. 

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Oh God. A _thousand times_ yes. Yes, he wants Pete’s dick more than just about anything else he can think of right now. His tongue is like chewing gum, stuck to the roof of his mouth. He makes a strange, breathy sound. Before he embarrasses himself by articulating this, Pete cracks up laughing. 

“Shit, sorry, that was awful. I’m just messing with you.”

“You’re not funny,” Patrick croaks, glaring at his penis with boner-wilting fury. Patrick has an _erection_ and Pete thinks it’s a _joke._ None of this is fine. He leans weakly against the stall wall and thinks unsexy thoughts. Tax returns — very unsexy. 

“You sound _flustered._ Am I making you _flustered?”_ Pete says, his grin audible. 

“No, of course not,” Patrick says, sounding flustered.

“You are, you’re so flustered over me. Are you blushing right now? I bet you’re blushing.”

“I’m not blushing,” says Patrick, blushing so hard he’s basically neon. 

“Aw, don’t make my day worse, Wall Street. My day is _so much better_ if I get to think about you blushing. For me. You’re fucking sexy when you blush.”

There’s no way Patrick can win this conversation, so he just sighs and says, “Whatever,” and waits for his dick to calm down. 

“So, I think we need to talk about the sex stuff,” Pete says and Patrick just about fucking _dies._ It’s like, he _wants_ the sex stuff, the sex stuff is very much the reason he’s here but hearing Pete say it _out loud_ , casually, like they’re talking about groceries, _this_ Patrick cannot cope with.

“Hnngh,” Patrick says with feeling, his voice unnaturally high. “It’s — what exactly did you want to talk about. With the, uh. The sex. Stuff.” 

Patrick sounds certifiable. He sounds like a lunatic. Normal people do not sound like this when confronted with totally normal words. 

“I just thought it might be a good idea to lay down some boundaries. Ground rules, that kind of thing,” Pete says, so fucking _sensibly._

“Uh,” Patrick stammers. “I mean. I don’t actually _have_ any… Oh, like, maybe don’t murder me? Can we say my boundary is please don’t murder me? I’d like it immensely if you didn’t murder me.”

“No murder, right,” Pete drawls. “You have such high expectations. I am seriously surprised that you’re not dead yet.”

“It seemed like a reasonable thing to point out. Did I ruin the surprise? Were you planning on murdering me?”

“Of course I’m not going to fucking _murder_ you. What the hell do you take me for?”

Patrick doesn’t point out that he met Pete less than a month ago when he picked him up in a shitty bar in the East Village and took him home for sex after two minutes of basic conversation. He neglects to continue that, the second time they met, Pete let Patrick suck his dick in his tattoo studio after a brief, but arousing, argument. He doesn’t point out that he doesn’t really know _what_ to think about Pete, frankly. He just makes a low, humming sound in the back of his throat in summing up. 

“Okay, fair,” Pete says, getting it. “Do you just — okay. Fine. How about I tell you _my_ hard limits?”

There’s no way this is happening. Patrick’s not going to listen to Pete talk about contractual sexual obligations in a bathroom stall on the forty-eighth floor of a New York office block. He hyperventilates casually into his hands. His penis rejoices but his penis makes awful decisions so Patrick’s going to ignore it for now.

“I’m not going to smack you around,” Pete says. Reasonable enough. Patrick’s never felt any particular predilection toward being smacked around. “And I’m not into humiliation or talking shit about you. Everyone’s here for a nice time, right?”

Patrick thinks about this. He thinks about the other men who called him a slut or a whore like it wasn’t an insult. The ones who woke up and changed their minds, suddenly heterosexual in the cold light of day. He thinks it didn’t feel… good. In the shivery, post-glow aftermath, other men made Patrick feel cheap. He doesn’t feel cheap around Pete. It’s a simple equation. So, he nods slowly even though Pete can’t see and he says, “Yeah, okay. No insults.”

“Great,” Pete says, and Patrick can hear him opening a cabinet, rummaging around inside. Going about his daily life while Patrick spontaneously combusts on the other end of the line. 

“Do we need, like, a safe word?” Patrick asks and _oh God,_ his face is on fire. “Is that a thing people do when they — when they, uh. You know?”

Pete laughs softly. “How about ‘stop,’ ‘no,’ and ‘this sucks, get the fuck off of me.’” Pete pauses and takes a deep breath. “I’m not a fucking monster, Wall Street. I’ll stop right away if you’re not into something.” 

Which is a fair point, actually. Life is confusing and Patrick is bad at it. He has no idea why this superior evolutionary specimen is wasting time talking to him, fucking him, flirting with him. It’s one of the great modern mysteries, like the whereabouts of Amelia Earhart. Or Donald Trump.

“I can’t come over tonight, by the way,” Pete adds. Which, like, okay. That kind of proves Patrick’s theory has basis in fact but that doesn’t stop him from feeling sad about it. 

“What?” Patrick says, sounding disappointed even to himself. “No. I mean, like. Whatever, you know. It’s fine. I have other things to do, you’re not my only option. I can totally find something else to do. My life isn’t—”

Then Pete interrupts him to say, “But I could come over tomorrow. Around eight?”

Patrick grins happily at the bathroom door and says, “Fuck yeah. I’ll text you my address.”

“Phone working?” Joe asks him casually, when Patrick gets back to his desk and goes back to staring blankly at his Trinity files.

Patrick huffs. A small, irritated huff. “I didn’t say it was broken,” he says, because he _didn’t._

Joe looks at him, his eyes bright with mischievous intent. 

“You know, we’re all going out for drinks after work,” he says casually. “People are bringing friends. Girlfriends.” Joe pauses, rubs the back of his neck and then adds, “Um, boyfriends, too. If that’s a thing you’re interested in.””

Patrick does not look up. Patrick concentrates so closely on the file in front of him that the figures may be permanently scarred into his retinas. He lifts one shoulder in a tiny shrug and doesn’t feel at all panicked by Joe’s inference. 

So, for clarity. It’s not that Patrick hasn’t told anyone he’s gay. He’s not ashamed and he’s not embarrassed and he’s not hiding in corporate closets. Like, _obviously_ Will knows he’s gay. Or at least sexually inclined toward penis on some level. But Patrick doesn’t like sharing personal details about himself with his colleagues. He looks up at Joe, a squirrelly look of prey animal mistrust. 

“And?” he asks, eyebrows arched. 

Joe shrugs. “I’m just saying. If you wanted to join us, it might — it would be nice to see you there. Like, sans stress-related forehead veins. That’s all.”

Patrick looks out of the window and imagines an alternate universe in which he arrives at an exclusive club in his five-thousand dollar suit with _Pete._ He feels rabbity with it, twitching all over, nervous tension in his shoulders. He’s a snob and that’s okay because his father paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to an Ivy League college that trained him in the art of being a snob. He’s a very _accomplished_ snob.

Patrick shakes his head. “No. I have a lot to do. I’ll probably stay here, work late.”

Joe sighs and pushes his hands through his hair. 

“Suit yourself,” he says. 

Patrick spends the night on a conference call to Tokyo and falls asleep at his desk at around three. He catches sight of his own pale, exhausted face in the office window when he jolts awake an hour later and asks himself — is this what he wants from his life?

He thinks about it on the cab ride back to his apartment, in the elevator, in the shower, as he falls into his criminally expensive bed, as he texts Pete _thinking about your hands,_ and when he lies awake, stressed and anxious and staring at the ceiling.. 

He doesn’t draw a conclusion. It’s probably fine. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We made it through another week, you guys. Give it up for yourselves! I know it's not easy, but be kind to yourselves and to each other. We'll get through it. If you want to talk, I'm on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers.


	7. Chapter 7

Patrick spends his Saturday afternoon alternately panicking that Pete isn’t going to show up and, also, panicking that Pete’s going to show up. The conflict is absurd.

His life isn’t like this, generally speaking. His weekends – the weekends he _doesn’t_ spend climbing the walls or catting around SoHo looking for someone to take the edge off, that is — pass in an endless loop of The Great British Baking Show and Sherlock reruns. He doesn’t invite anyone to his apartment, because he doesn’t have friends and he _definitely_ doesn’t date.

So when Pete shows up at 8:15, lounging against Patrick’s front door having, apparently, memorised the gate code _and_ charmed his way past security, Patrick’s capacity for socialising is stretched thinner than razor wire. Pete’s wearing his ubiquitous black skinnies with ridiculous sneakers, an oversized grey sweatshirt and _another_ snapback. A six-pack of Miller dangles from his fingertip, a condom snagged between his teeth. He’s almost unforgivably hot. Patrick considers, for a moment, slamming the door in Pete’s face and crawling back to the relative safety of Paul Hollywood and Benedict Cumberbatch. 

“Wall Street,” Pete purrs, letting the condom drop into his long-fingered hand. Patrick’s bravado decreases in direct correlation with Pete’s effortless sexiness. “You look… _delicious.”_

Patrick is dressed in his Saturday sweats and a Red Sox jersey he’s owned since college, his feet bare. His hair is freshly washed, definitively unstyled. He’s not wearing cologne. Patrick could not have made more effort to show that he’s made _zero_ effort but Pete is still staring at him like he could eat Patrick up for dessert. It’s not unflattering.

“You didn’t have to bring your own beer,” Patrick says.

“Are you planning on kicking me out before I get a chance to drink it?” Pete asks lightly.

Patrick glares. “I meant I have drinks already. It’s not a keg party. You’re my,” Patrick pauses, then finishes awkwardly, “my _guest.”_

In direct contravention of Patrick’s own internal hook up code, he has sort of… prepared for the evening. It’s not a date — God, but he keeps saying that — but he’s bought wine and, like, _agonized_ over it with the wine merchant. He’s tasted smoky, vibrant, floral, red fruit sips and nodded knowledgeably over vintage and provenance. He walked out with a thick linen bag and three heavy bottles and felt proud of himself for being a decent host. Then he thought about Pete and his tattoo studio and his beer bottle in the club and he ducked into the bodega on the corner of his block and picked up a six-pack of Pabst and a bag of pretzels.

Go all-in, right?

“‘You look nice tonight, Pete. Thanks for coming over, tonight, Pete. I’m sure it’s super inconvenient for you to get the subway across the city but I really appreciate it, Pete,’” Pete says, terminally ungrateful for the beer chilling in the fridge. 

Okay, Pete doesn’t actually _know_ about the beer, but that’s not the point.

“Oh, right, yeah. All of that,” Patrick says weakly, stepping back from the door and letting Pete inside. “You should come in. Um, take your shoes off. It’s real hardwood. Do you have _any idea_ how much of a pain in the ass hardwood is to polish?”

Pete toes off his sneakers with exaggerated care and lines them up neatly under the coat rack. He’s wearing blue socks studded with tiny green frogs. Bright blue socks with neon green, smiling cartoon frogs. There’s something endearing about frog socks. For the first time, Patrick isn’t fighting a losing battle to toss himself out of a window to escape how small and pointless Pete makes him feel because Pete wears _froggy_ socks. He ducks his head, hides his smile in the collar of his shirt. 

“Interesting choice,” Patrick says, nodding to Pete’s feet.

“One thing you should know about me: I have unrivalled taste in socks,” Pete says, setting his beer down on the bureau in the hall and wiggling his toes. 

Patrick says, “Clearly,” and turns to look back at Pete and Pete gives him this tangibly needy and knowing look, takes Patrick’s face in both big hands and crushes him up against the wall. Pete smells _so_ good it knocks him dizzy. 

“We’re supposed to watch a movie first,” Patrick breathes, like a man who does not want his dick sucked. “I had a couple picked out.”

Pete presses his hips to Patrick’s and Patrick begins to melt sweatily. “But you’re no good at decisions outside of work, are you, Wall Street? That’s why you invited me over, right? To _think_ for you?”

Patrick is having a difficult time thinking about anything other than his cock. But he’s not done sabotaging himself, apparently, so he says, “You’re not as hot shit as you think you are,” like an _idiot._

“I’m going to kiss you,” Pete says simply, rubbing his nose against Patrick’s. “But I want you to know I’m not kissing you because you want me to kiss you. I’m kissing you so you’ll stop fucking bitching.”

Patrick swallows, his throat dry, palms wet. He needs something clever to say, a witty repartee to prove Pete isn’t having any sort of effect on him. 

“Please,” he whispers. So, yeah. Close enough. 

And Pete kisses him. 

It’s a good kiss. It’s a high school kiss with too much tongue. It’s a summer parking lot with warm beer and humidity and Midwest sidewalks melting softly under sneakers kind of kiss. It’s experimental, desperate, Pete’s tongue a flicking arc that parts Patrick’s teeth and lets him press inside. They push and parry: Pete bites Patrick’s lower lip and Patrick digs his hands into Pete’s shoulders until his fingernails throb. Pete cups Patrick’s ass in both hands, squeezes like he’s checking for ripeness and Patrick jumps, wraps his thighs around Pete’s waist and lets Pete kiss him back into the wall.

They kiss until Pete breaks away, gasping, his eyes all endless, starless pupil and he whispers against Patrick’s lips, “You’re kind of a dick, Wall Street.” It would have more heat if he wasn’t breathing into Patrick’s mouth, if his dick wasn’t stiff and obvious as anything against Patrick’s sweats. Patrick takes a fisty handful of Pete’s hair and tugs, attacking Pete’s throat with tooth and tongue. Pete snarls, “I’m gonna suck you off until your fucking knees buckle.”

Patrick’s stomach knots, his dick jumping hard. He breathes, “I’ll never say no to you,” and Pete is walking them both down the hallway, staggering a little, Patrick wrapped around him like he weighs nothing at all. Patrick is going to die from sudden lack of oxygenated blood to the brain, he’s sure of it.

They land on the bed in a merry octopus tangle of arms and legs and mouths and hands. Patrick’s got a fist curled down the front of Pete’s jeans, jacking Pete’s cock. Pete’s fingers slide into Patrick’s mouth and slick his tongue with Pete-skin taste. When Patrick gets his hand back, it’s salty with Pete’s smell, wet across the palm with precome that he licks away and Pete watches and groans and kisses his taste from Patrick’s mouth. They strip one another down with impatience. Pete’s sweatshirt, Patrick’s sweats, Pete’s t-shirt, Patrick’s jersey, button by button, Pete’s hands tracing every inch of skin revealed. 

“You are fucking _beautiful,”_ Pete whispers reverently, thumbing over Patrick’s nipples, tracing his tongue around Patrick’s navel. Patrick closes his eyes and tries not to come.

Pete’s hands, Patrick’s hips, Patrick’s briefs, Patrick’s cock, Patrick’s cock, Patrick’s _cock._

Pete mouths sloppily over Patrick’s thighs. He sucks a line of kisses from hip bone to navel and down the gingery trajectory of Patrick’s happy trail. He pauses, his mouth hovering over the quivering pink tip of Patrick’s swollen, leaking dick and lets his breath ripple down the length of it. He presses on Patrick’s hips with big, blunt hands and Patrick revels in the totally immersive experience of having _no control_ over what happens next. 

“You have a fucking _remarkable_ dick, Wall Street,” Pete whispers. He sinks slowly down over the length of it before Patrick can ask if that’s supposed to be a compliment. The sucking suggests it’s probably a good thing. Patrick tips back his head and _whines._

It winnows down to this: to Pete’s mouth and Pete’s tongue and Pete’s lips and Patrick’s breathy shout and eager throbbing hard-on. Pete slides his mouth off to the tip, swirls his tongue and dips back down. Patrick twists a fist into his own hair and tries not to get caught up in the way Pete looks at him.

He needs to relax, needs to enjoy this. He needs, and he needs, and he _needs_ and this is too much, too fast, too good. He’s making desperate little noises, he has no way of stopping and he’s not going to last, not going to last _at all._ It’s embarrassing, is the thing. It’s fucking _teenage._

It hits him suddenly.

“I’m gonna – Fuck, I’m gonna come!” he gasps out, fighting the hold Pete has on his hips.

Pete doesn’t let go. He pulls off slickly, wet mouth shining in the lamplight, only long enough to whisper, “That’s sort of the point,” and then he sucks Patrick back into his throat with wicked intent and, yes. Okay. That’s definitely acceptable. Patrick’s spine arches cleanly off the bed and his feet kick weakly and his stomach knots and he gasps out “More,” and “Yes,” and “Please,” and just as Patrick is about to lose his self-awareness through the tip of his cock, Pete pulls off. 

Patrick’s erection twitches angrily, a thing of blood and fury. He’s so hard, he’s lost the ability to process thought. Patrick glares at the ceiling. When that doesn’t change anything, he tips up on his elbows and glares at Pete. “What the fuck?” he says plaintively. “Suck me off, shithead.”

“You’re very mouthy,” Pete says, tracing Patrick’s spit-wet dick with a casual fingertip. “Very demanding. You need to learn how to slow down. Be patient. Let things happen to you.”

Patrick has no desire to learn any of this with his dick throbbing a distress signal in Morse code. He wants to _come._ He twists his hands in Pete’s hair and tugs in no particular direction because he doesn’t know what he wants beyond a low, primal chant of _orgasm, orgasm, orgasm._ Pete grabs Patrick’s hand and pins his wrist to the bed and looks at Patrick with forest fire heat.

“Pull my hair again and I’ll tie you to the bed and edge you for the next three hours,” Pete says, in this sexy, dangerous tone that knots Patrick’s gut. That sounds both electrifying and terrifying. Patrick’s hands flop onto the pillow. He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and bites down until it threatens to burst like a ripe strawberry. 

“Good boy,” Pete murmurs, his hands cupping Patrick’s ass, lifting him up, scraping his teeth against the curve of Patrick’s ass cheek. 

“I’ll be so good,” Patrick slurs, sounding drunk and desperate and he _hates_ that Pete makes him feel this way. So needy and uncontrolled. He also _adores_ that Pete makes him feel this way, so that’s a conundrum but he’ll think about it when there’s blood in his brain and not capped in his dick. 

Pete takes his time. He sucks Patrick off with slow, measured movements. The precision is astounding, the way he pulls Patrick right to the crest of that glorious, terrible wave and then drags him back under the surface. The way he smirks at Patrick as he leaves bruising kisses over Patrick’s vein-pale thighs. The devilish glow in his eyes as he digs into Patrick and fingers him until he’s a gasping, sweaty mess, entirely wrecked and perfectly ruined. 

“You can come now,” Pete whispers, after what feels like _hours._ And then he dips his head and sucks Patrick’s dick and Patrick feels like he’s dropping through all four dimensions at once. He grabs onto the pillows and bites his lip and throbs all over. Pete’s mouth, God, Pete’s _mouth._ He comes with a breathy groan of Pete’s name, in Pete’s mouth and over Pete’s chin and flecking pearly globs in Pete’s scruff.

Pete makes a sound, buried between Patrick’s thighs. A slow, humming _moan_ that echoes through Patrick’s dorsal vein, that makes him twitch and clench and gasp out loud. Pete’s eyes roll back and he looks so undeniably _happy_ with Patrick’s dick in his mouth and Patrick’s come on his face and its… it’s basically the hottest thing Patrick’s seen in his _life._ Patrick’s ruined now. He can only ever fuck Pete. 

So, there’s that.

Pete presses his thumb, gently, between Patrick’s cheeks and says, “Stay with me, Wall Street. I’m not done with you yet.”

Patrick whines, his dick twitching heroically against his thigh. “Can’t go again right now. Need to come down.”

“You’re going again,” Pete promises him, his jeans pushed off his hips and his thick red dick drooling against his tattoo. “And next time you come it’ll be on my cock.”

Patrick keens. “Oh my fucking _God.”_

Strong hands flip Patrick over, his face crushed into the mattress as his hips squirm and Pete pauses, his breath warm against Patrick’s hole. Pete teases him with arcing flicks until Patrick’s a begging, gasping, sweaty mess. Then Pete gives in and licks into him, his tongue warm and wet and insistent and fucking _Heaven on Earth._ Patrick spreads his legs until his thighs scream in protest. He bucks his hips and pushes back until Pete pins him down and drives his tongue inside and Patrick swears he can feel Pete grinning, the smooth slick of his teeth against Patrick’s most intimate place. He scrunches a hand into Pete’s hair and drags him closer and decides he can probably forgive Pete for his unbearable fucking smugness if he keeps doing this. He can forgive Pete anything so long as he doesn’t stop. 

“Hands, Wall Street,” Pete says, still smug.

“Fuck _you,”_ Patrick whines. But he puts his hands under the pillow, keeps his knees folded under himself and surrenders entirely.

Patrick’s dick swells again. He’s almost as pleased by the fact that he’ll get to come again as he is irritated by Pete’s reaction to his erection. “What’s this?” Pete says, all smug and show-offy, fingering along Patrick’s swell. “Aw, Wall Street. For me? You didn’t have to get me anything.” 

“It’s basic biology,” Patrick pants. “You’re not special.”

“You love this,” Pete says, pulling back with a smirk so audible that Patrick wants to smother his stupid, shiny grin with a pillow. “And I’m so, so special.”

Patrick flops onto his back, his hard-again dick swaying with the motion. “Fuck you. Just let me bask before you ruin it.”

Pete laughs softly, his hands and eyes occupied with the practicalities of rolling on a condom, slicking his cock. He sits back against the headboard and pulls Patrick, loose and unprotesting as a rag doll, so that he’s straddling Pete’s lap, facing away from him. His dick burns against Patrick’s thigh. Dying like this, it mightn’t be an awful way to go. 

“Put ‘em up,” Pete whispers into Patrick’s ear. Patrick goes with it, raises his hands and crosses his wrists behind his head. Pete spans his wrists with a single hand and holds him in place. Patrick whimpers, burning already through his biceps, his shoulders. Pete sets his teeth into Patrick’s nape and pushes in with one long, slow stroke. 

“Fuck. Oh, _fuck,”_ Patrick breathes, the air punched from his lungs. 

“That’s it, sweetheart,” Pete croons into his ear, the words curling around Patrick like fingers, warm and sure. “Just relax. S’good, right? Fuck, you feel so — so good. Roll your hips a little for me. Fuck yeah, just like that.” 

Patrick has no idea what he’s doing, just knows that Pete likes it and he likes doing things that Pete likes. He pushes into the hold on his wrists and rolls his ass into the bracket of Pete’s hips, feels Pete so thick and hard and hot inside of him. This is it for him. Pete fucking into him and Pete pinning his hands and Patrick’s body tingling all over.

Patrick’s so hard and he wants to come so badly and he can’t because Pete’s hand is on his wrists and Pete’s mouth is on his spine and Pete’s whispering filth into Patrick’s skin and all Patrick can do is writhe on Pete’s cock and beg for it.

Patrick tips his head back into the bracket of his own caged arms and breathes, “Touch me.”

Pete hums, nosing at Patrick’s hairline. “Say please.”

“Please,” Patrick whispers. “Fuck, please. Please, please, please.”

And Pete laughs, “Nah, come like this, come for me just like this, I know you can do it.” He changes the angle, flicking his hips up so his dick feathers against Patrick’s prostate. 

And Patrick says, “I can’t — I just — I fucking _can’t,_ you have to…” and it’s pointless because Pete shifts his hips, shoves into him again and again and Patrick comes, sharp and almost painful and absolutely _exquisite._

Before Patrick can react, Pete’s lifting him onto his front, folding his knees under him and taking Patrick’s wrists in both hands, pinning them either side of Patrick’s head as he slides inside where Patrick is fluttering and grasping and so fucking sensitive. Pete fucks him, facedown, just like that, mouthing at Patrick’s shoulders and kissing Patrick’s nape. Pete fucks him and fucks him until Patrick’s hoarse from moaning and then Pete tenses behind him, shivers, and collapses, his sweaty forehead pressed to Patrick’s sweaty back. Patrick thinks _That was fucking life-changing_ and Pete laughs breathlessly into his ear, so he must’ve said it out loud. He’s not embarrassed. 

“Wall Street, what the fuck?” Pete groans, half laughter, half deep admiration.

Excellent arrangement, he thinks. Like, Patrick’s convinced himself that he can’t cope with the personal stuff but, so far? This is fucking _great._ Pete plays with Patrick’s fingers and softens inside of him until the physical contact becomes too much and Patrick wriggles away, lets Pete slip from his body and finds a cool spot on the sheets. He’s never been the type to cuddle. Pete looks at him from the far side of six feet of bed linen and he looks sex-rumpled and gorgeous and… sad. 

They came less than two minutes ago, and Pete already looks like he’s cycling through all five stages of grief. That’s a new record, even for Patrick. 

“So, what now?” Pete rasps, his voice wrecked and loud and startling. 

Patrick blinks in the lamplight. Now he’s come, the edge is gone. The blood in his dick leaks slowly back into his brain and he says, “You mean you _don’t_ want to get married and adopt a Pomeranian?” He’s joking — obviously — but Pete’s mouth twists and his eyes darken and Patrick realises the joke isn’t well-received. Patrick shrugs. “I don’t know. We drink beer, I guess. Order take out. Go again when we’re ready and fuck until we’re too tired to keep going. Then we sleep. Maybe tomorrow I’ll buy you breakfast and you’ll go home and think you had a nice time. Maybe you’ll consider coming back.”

Pete’s face grows sadder with every word. Patrick doesn’t want to make Pete _sad._ Sad people make lousy sexual partners. 

Pete says, “I thought this would feel better than it does. This feels — it feels cheap.”

Pete’s lying on thousand dollar bed sheets, so Patrick can only assume he means cheap in the emotional sense. 

“I’m sorry,” Patrick says.

Pete shrugs. “It’s whatever.”

Patrick smiles and touches his finger to Pete’s cheek, poking softly. “Hey, grouchy,” he says. 

“Fuck off.”

“Sad Pitt. Grumphry Bogart. Crabbly Cooper.”

Pete’s mouth curls ever so slightly. “That last one’s a stretch.”

“Totally,” Patrick agrees. Then he sighs and pillows his cheek on his fist. “Look, I told you I don’t date. That’s a thing I was super clear about.”

“I know,” Pete says defensively. “Who’d want to date _you,_ asshole?”

“No one sensible,” Patrick says. “It is what it is, you know? You’re a nice guy and you’ll find someone just as nice to date and you’ll get married and I’ll still be an asshole and you’ll realise you had a lucky escape.”

Pete doesn’t say anything but he does pull on his underwear and tosses Patrick his sweatshirt — soft, smelling of Pete’s skin, big enough on Patrick that it falls halfway down his thighs. Then he looks down at his phone with a frown and says, “I have to make a call,” and, like, that’s weird, right? It’s not that Patrick thinks he’s entitled to the ins and outs of Pete’s _life_ or anything, but it’s kind of fucking peculiar that Pete steps into the hallway to make it. Not _Patrick’s_ hallway. The _municipal_ hallway. Door closed. Patrick paces his kitchen and pours himself a glass of wine. 

“Everything okay?” he asks casually, when Pete comes back, plunks his phone down on the counter and cracks open a beer. 

Pete shrugs. Starts rummaging through Patrick’s cabinets like he owns the place, pulling faces at Patrick’s organic, unbleached, blue corn tortilla chips, his oven baked chickpeas. “You have horrible taste in junk food, Wall Street,” he says. “I’m starving.”

“We can order in,” Patrick says. Hesitantly, he adds, “Urgent calls at 9 at night? You’re either a secret agent or...” 

He lets it hang. Doesn’t want to say it out loud. 

“Or...?” Pete says levelly, maintaining intense eye contact. 

Patrick shrugs. “Whatever, I guess.”

“Got any menus?” Pete asks, attacking Patrick’s kitchen drawers. 

Patrick decides to let it drop.

They settle on the couch and watch a movie, Pete’s heat leaching from his skin and into Patrick’s cheek as he dozes, warm and comfortable, his feet tucked up under himself and his hand on Pete’s thigh. 

“You know, if you ever wanted to reconsider the whole dating thing, you should know you’d look pretty good in a boyfriend’s hoodie,” Pete tells him, when they’ve eaten Lebanese food and they’re making out on the couch and Pete’s hands are wandering under the hem of the sweatshirt, pinching at Patrick’s nipples, scratching at his sides. 

Patrick laughs into Pete’s mouth and presses his lazily half-hard dick to Pete’s thigh.

“I’ll bear that in mind,” he says. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is everyone hanging in there? I hope you're all doing okay, my lovelies.


	8. Chapter 8

Pete leaves before breakfast on Sunday because he has plans with friends or needs to open his shop or… something. He’s vague about it. Patrick doesn’t press him for details.

It’s whatever. Patrick isn’t overthinking it and if Pete wants to run back to Williamsburg and lick his wounds over his  _ feelings, _ that’s up to him. It doesn’t change anything. Pete says goodbye, though.  _ Nicely _ and everything. He says goodbye and he kisses Patrick with his minty toothpaste mouth and he leaves his sweater on the back of the couch and his salty Pete-smell on Patrick’s thousand-dollar bed sheets and he smiles and he  _ leaves _ like, hey, none of it even  _ matters. _

And he doesn’t contact Patrick for almost a week.

It’s AP Chem Lab: predictable outcomes based on previously observed data. Pete doesn’t call because he’s hurt or he’s angry or because he didn’t think the rules applied to him. Still, if Patrick’s honest with himself – which he rarely strives to be – he’s sad about it. Which is weird, because it’s not like Patrick’s into Pete. It’s not like he’s  _ falling _ for the guy. Or  _ any  _ guy. He’s not wearing Pete’s sweatshirt, smelling the collar for lingering traces of Pete’s cologne, skin,  _ sweat.  _

Alright, he’s definitely wearing the sweatshirt. But Patrick’s not taking the tentative step off the edge of a metaphorical building and hoping that love might save him because...

Because love  _ can’t _ save him. Because he, fundamentally and without exception, does not believe in romantic love. 

It’s not that he lacks the capacity for love of any kind. For example: he loves his mom, he loves his brother and sister, he loves the Italian place on the corner of his block, his vinyl collection, his suits, the family dog back in Chicago,  _ Chicago _ generally, as a matter of fact. Patrick loves things deeply and enduringly and in many-faceted ways, he’s just never been  _ in love, _ and the times he’s come close it’s gone so wrong, so fast and  _ he’s  _ the common denominator. He is the boy with jagged edges that don’t quite match anyone else’s. He’s just… messed up, maybe.

He  _ definitely _ doesn’t love Pete. Or feel the slightest inclination that he could, one day, maybe, possibly develop the capacity to love Pete in the way Pete seems to want so desperately to  _ be _ loved. He thinks he  _ likes _ Pete. As much as he can like a man he barely knows. They’ve got things in common, like Bowie and 80s movies and having ill-advised sex with strangers. He doesn’t think Pete is ‘The One’ because he doesn’t think he has a ‘One.’ Patrick is married to his  _ career. _ He wouldn’t have it any other way.

Patrick’s fine and Pete doesn’t text and that’s all… great, honestly. Patrick’s doing  _ great. _

To summarise, he’s just  _ spiffingly _ okay with Pete not texting for five days. It’s peachy. It’s his favourite fucking thing. In fact, caught in the middle of the catastrophic clusterfuck that is the Trinity account and stressed beyond all reasonable measure, he totally couldn’t make use of the soporific properties of Pete’s penis anyway.

So, when Pete texts at two in the morning, Friday:  _ cool to talk? _ Patrick replies from his desk in the affirmative before he can overthink it. His phone rings, heart sings. He green-buttons the call and says, breathily, “Hi.”

“Wall Street,” Pete says, his voice thick and warm as honey. “How’re things?”

Patrick huffs. “It’s two in the morning, why aren’t you sleeping?” 

“Why aren’t you?” Pete bites back. “Tell me what you’re wearing. Make it sexy, even if it’s not.”

Patrick looks down at his crumpled shirt and soy sauce-spotted tie. “Like, lingerie? You want me in a little silk number with ribbon and lace?”

“Fuck,” Pete laughs. “Jesus Christ, if you like? I dunno, you look hot in a three-piece.”

“Then yeah, I’m wearing a three-piece,” Patrick says, tipping back in his chair. There’s no one else on his floor, the office completely deserted. 

“You’re from Chicago,” Pete says, over the sound of his breath hitching, the unmistakable rustle of his hand dipping into his pants.

“Dude,” Patrick says, faintly scandalised, mostly turned on. “Did you call me to whack off?”

“Does that bother you? I can stop—”

“No. No, you don’t need to stop. But, like, pictures maybe? Can you send me pictures?”

“Sure,” Pete says. “Later. But you’re from Chicago, right?”

“Maybe,” Patrick says, his dick filling in one brain-blood-stealing throb. “What makes you say that?”

“I mean, you have an accent. You try to hide it, but you let slip when you’re… you know.”

“Being fucked six ways from Sunday?” Patrick says, pressing up into the restriction of his zipper. 

“Right. It’s sexy.”

Patrick says, “Glenview via Evanston,” very softly. 

Pete laughs, spits audibly into his palm, and says, “Wilmette. See, Wall Street? We’re not so different. Not really.” 

“I think I’d like to see you,” Patrick ventures, his hand on his zipper. “Like, right now. I could let you into the building, there’s an executive bathroom with, like, the biggest mirror you’ve ever seen in your life.”

“I can’t,” Pete says, and Patrick hears the echo. Pete’s making the call from his bathroom. That’s — he can’t analyse that right now. “I can’t just — It’s complicated. Saturday, though. I can see you Saturday.”

Patrick avoids his own eyes in the window, his thumb creasing along his swollen cock under his pants. He finds an unexplored channel, rubs the weeping nervy head into the seam and gasps. “Okay. Stay on the line? Just, talk about whatever you like. Well. Maybe not taxes. Maybe not your mom.”

“Touch yourself,” Pete says, all breathy and soft. If Patrick listens closely, he can hear Pete’s hand on his dick. His blood heats him from the inside out. 

It turns out, when Patrick comes with Pete whispering filth into his ear, it’s almost as good as coming with Pete inside of him. Patrick finishes into a paper napkin from the bottom of his takeout bag and Pete’s voice syrups through him, golden warm and molten honey. Patrick rests his cheek against his desk and breathes hard. 

“Patrick,” Pete says. 

“Yeah?”

“I’m definitely not into you.”

It’s not great, as far as pillow talk can be ranked and rated. But Patrick is now the kind of guy who masturbates at his desk, so whatever. 

Patrick says, “Yeah, no. I basically can’t stand you, either. You’ve got a passable dick, though.”

“Thanks,” Pete tells him. “Your ass is half-decent.”

“I’m going to sleep now,” he tells Pete, dazed. 

“I should try to do the same,” Pete says softly, “I’ll see you Saturday.” 

“Tomorrow,” Patrick says. “Technically.”

“Tomorrow,” Pete agrees. And then he hangs up.

Saturday finds Patrick on his knees in his hallway, Pete’s bandana knotted over his eyes and his mouth on Pete’s dick. Patrick isn’t thinking about how weird it was for Pete to call him from his bathroom at two in the morning. Patrick isn’t thinking about much at all.  _ Stay calm, _ he tells himself, his hands behind his back, Pete’s hands smoothing gently through his hair.  _ Don’t say anything you can’t take back. _

For safety, Patrick elects not to say anything  _ at all. _ He sucks Pete’s dick in total darkness, his mouth useful only for giving head and taking quick, ragged breaths. This is what he needs. No relationships, no expectations, no weird feelings about Pete’s personal life. There is no confusion about Patrick’s feelings for Pete. Patrick’s feelings for Pete are contained in his dick and that’s just a fact. 

(There is  _ so much _ confusion. When Pete cups Patrick’s cheek in his warm hand while he fucks him, brushes his thumb over Patrick’s mouth and whispers, “God, you don’t even know,” Patrick is forced to admit that he  _ doesn’t _ know. What does that even  _ mean? _ Patrick is a silly boy of silken wishes.)

They flop on Patrick’s expensive couch. Patrick curls his cold toes into Pete’s warm calves and they split cartons of takeout and watch Rushmore. Pete is a beautiful thing, his face cast in the blue electric light of the screen, his hand curled over Patrick’s hip. A warm bubble inflates slowly in Patrick’s chest: half like panic, half like something that’s definitely not panic. This is not going according to plan. 

“Why did you move to New York?” Patrick asks, as Jason Shwarzman exchanges lines with Bill Murray. 

Pete doesn’t look away from the screen. “Work,” he says stoically. The last time Patrick checked, there were tattoo parlours in Chicago. He doesn’t voice this, though. Instead, he traces slow, indolent patterns on Pete’s bare brown stomach, his fingers flirting with the band of Pete’s boxers. He curls his thumb just below the elastic, feels the coarse edge of Pete’s pubic hair. Pete hums and looks at Patrick, his eyes hot and honey-slow. “Yeah?” he breathes, arching his hips. His dick fills, thick and obvious. Patrick grabs his resolve with both hands.

“You know when you called me the other night?” Patrick prompts. 

Patrick licks his dry lips and Pete’s eyes track the movement. He says, “Uhuh?”

“It sounded like you were in the bathroom,” Patrick says. Pete smells different after sex, he notes. Calmer, warmer, cotton-soft. Patrick tucks his nose into the crook of Pete’s neck and feels Pete’s reply rumble up through his chest, into his throat. 

“Did I?” Pete says, which isn’t an answer. He flips them over, brackets Patrick’s thighs with his own, links their fingers and presses Patrick down into the cushions. “Very weird.”

Pete grinds his stiffening dick into Patrick’s and Patrick feels it all the way down to his toes. Patrick elects not to push it. 

Their relationship progresses like this: Pete will call Patrick midweek for echoey bathroom phone sex. On Saturdays, he shows up with Miller Lite and his spicy Pete smell. He leaves behind t-shirts and sweatshirts and plastic DVD cases and Patrick limps through his working week because of these highlights, these tiny bursts of Pete like oases in a drought. 

Two weeks later, he realises he’s clocked over a hundred hours in a week. He doesn’t know how to feel about it. 

Aside from crashing out over his keyboard, he hasn’t really  _ slept _ in the past week either, which is definitely concerning. He only sleeps when Pete’s around, a co-dependent disposition that Patrick hates. The empty boxes of caffeine pills stack up in the trash can. There may still be a little blood in his coffee system. His eyes feel hot and gritty and there’s a permanent ringing in his ears that he hopes is a side effect of the exhaustion and not something more sinister, like, say, a stroke. Not that he has  _ time _ to have a stroke. The EMTs will have to grab his laptop and his Trinity files and his phone and he’ll totally carry on working on the crash table because this is his life and he  _ likes _ it this way, okay? Everything is  _ fine.  _

The office empties out, everyone heading home to people who love them. Patrick carries on working because he’s formed a deep and meaningful attachment to his laptop and his expanding box files, so he spends his evening with them. And also Joe, who’s flipping through copies of the Wall Street Journal and looking increasingly like a man about to throw himself from a forty-eighth storey window. But there’s takeout and sparkling mineral water and Bowie on Spotify and it’s, honestly, it’s kind of nice. Like, other people hang out at bars with their friends on Friday night and others hang out with columns of figures and pages of reports and, like, whatever, that’s totally cool. It’s not pathetic. Patrick rolls up his sleeves and takes off his tie and really digs in to his paperwork. 

Patrick is picking at a carton of fried rice, pulling out slivers of chicken and pork and setting them to one side to savour when a shadow falls over his desk. 

He blinks up. It’s Will Beckett. Roaming the lower floors like a demonic overlord of ancient prophecy and here’s Patrick without holy water, like a chump. 

“Your desk is a mess,” Will says, instead of something normal like ‘Hi.’ Clearly, manners aren’t mandatory in whichever brimstone-scented Hell dimension Will escaped from.

Patrick looks at his desk and his desk is stacked high with papers and audits and ten years’ worth of investment history for every facet of the Trinity Corporation but it’s  _ organised _ chaos and Patrick knows where everything is so he’s not concerned and he nods and says, “Yes, it is,” and hopes Will’s going to leave it at that.

Will doesn’t leave it at that.

Instead, Will oozes over Patrick’s office floor with slithery intent. Will is long and thin and sharp-tongued with dark, soulless eyes, like Kaa or Nagini or fucking  _ Lucifer.  _ Does National Geographic recommend making noise or standing very still when being attacked by reptiles? Is that bears? Patrick is a terrible apex predator. 

Will pauses in front of Patrick’s desk and looks down at him and pokes a stack of papers with obvious disdain. “How do you find anything in here?”

“I have a system,” Patrick says. Will presses harder and the stack wobbles. Patrick rushes to steady it. “It's a very  _ Promethean  _ system.”

Will smiles at him. All tooth and threat. “It’s unacceptable. Unprofessional. Do you have any idea how easy it would be to lose something vital on a desk like this?”

Patrick nods then shakes his head, because he’s not sure what the right answer is. He does not comment on the lack of professionalism associated with sleeping with one’s employees. He needs to stop allowing Will to corner him like this. Will towers over him anyway and Patrick, sitting down and tipped back in his chair so he can look up and meet Will’s eyes, dislikes what the height difference infers. 

“Maybe when I have five minutes to carry out some maintenance...” Patrick says, trailing off. 

“Do you  _ want  _ sole responsibility for losing T.A.I. Holdings’ biggest account?” Will asks, and it’s probably rhetorical, and Patrick doesn’t think he should answer it with rhetoric because Will looks angry enough as it is. 

Patrick says, “Uh…”

“There are  _ other people _ waiting for a job like yours, Patrick.  _ Better _ people. Committed people who don’t think coasting through Harvard is a substitute for hard work.”

A hundred hours. Patrick has clocked a  _ hundred fucking hours _ since Monday and Will wants to talk about hard work. The only way Patrick could work harder is if he conducts business calls in the  _ bathroom. _

“I’ll work harder,” he says robotically. 

Will says nothing. But he does ‘accidentally’ knock a stack of papers onto the floor. “Whoops” he says. “How clumsy of me.”

Will leaves, smiling venomously. He doesn’t say goodbye and Patrick stares down at the confetti of paperwork littering his office floor. All of that organisation. Hours of it. At the next desk, Joe winces in sympathy. 

“Let me help you,” he says, standing up before Patrick. “God, that fucking guy. What a dick, right?”

Patrick doesn’t reply. It could be a trap, is the thing. Joe could be planted at the desk next to Patrick’s by someone like Will, or Will’s dad and this could be the first snake pit in a series of intricately laid traps and Patrick has worked too damn hard to get where he is to lose it all on a half-assed insult. So, whatever. Patrick will bite his tongue. He will pretend he  _ agrees _ with what Will’s done. He will probably seem convincing.

“No,” he mutters. Joe is already gathering papers, already organising them by date as he shuffles through them. “No. You don’t have to do that. He’s totally right. It’s fine, I can— I can fix this. I just need—”

“You need a week off,” Joe says sympathetically. “Or a month, maybe. You need to decompress, man. You’re three projects from a heart attack.”

Patrick’s probably going to have a heart attack during his  _ current  _ project, thanks awfully. That’s basically a foregone conclusion at this point. Absolute return, as they say in the business. Joe keeps picking up papers and shuffling them into piles and, like, what’s this guy’s problem? He doesn’t have to  _ pretend _ to be nice,  _ no one _ on Wall Street is  _ nice.  _ So, yeah. Patrick’s read about this on the internet. There are definite subReddits about this kind of workplace espionage. Patrick is smarter than this. 

“I don’t want your help,” Patrick snaps, grabbing at paperwork and stuffing it into haphazard little paper avalanches that slide over his desk. 

“Patrick,” Joe says, sounding grave. “This isn’t healthy. Your whole life isn’t healthy. What time did you go home last night?”

Patrick snorts. “I don’t have  _ time  _ to go home. I don’t know if you’ve looked around but this is pretty fucking all-consuming.”

“You need some work-life balance.”

“I  _ have _ a work-life balance. I’m balancing my work and my life  _ right now, _ and I don’t recall asking for your input.”

“You’re going to burn out.” 

Patrick lashes out before he can stop himself. “And  _ you _ need to stop running home to your wife and your fucking  _ brats, _ okay? You leave early  _ every fucking night, _ don’t think I don’t notice. Don’t think  _ Will _ doesn’t notice. You leave early and you’re not committed and you’re going. To fucking.  _ Fail.” _

Joe stares at Patrick from wide blue eyes. He places down the papers with hands that shake only fractionally. He stands and straightens and brushes off the knees of his off-the-rack pants and he looks down at Patrick with such unbearable fucking  _ pity. _ What the fuck is this? Patrick owns an apartment on the Upper West Side. He belongs to an exclusive health club he doesn’t have time to attend. He spends more on suits and tailoring than most people spend on their  _ houses _ and Joe thinks he deserves  _ pity? _

“I feel sorry for you,” Joe says, which confirms it and what the fuck? Everyone is supposed to be  _ jealous  _ of Patrick. “I’m trying to be your friend, man. I’m looking out for you. But you’re a fucking  _ asshole,  _ so whatever, I guess _.  _ Work yourself to death, see if anyone cares.”

Patrick scowls at his desk chair. There’s a powdery scratch at the back of his throat, a thick and welling film just behind his eyes. Joe grabs his coat and his phone and he stalks for the door without another word and then it’s just Patrick and his scattered paperwork and the uneasy sense that maybe Joe is right. Possibly. Like, just a little.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly. 

Joe doesn’t hear him, or else he just doesn’t care. The door slams behind him and Patrick is left alone. 

Obviously, he calls Pete. He calls Pete because he can’t abide by his own rules. Because it’s been two weeks and he’s already blurring the boundaries. Because the heart is a complex and overwhelming thing and Patrick has no control over it.

Pete answers on the second ring, sounding distracted. “Hi,” he says. 

“Can you meet me at my place tonight?” Patrick says quickly. “I know we said tomorrow, but I haven’t slept in days and I really just need you to put me under, okay? Just for a couple hours.”

The line is silent. Not even Pete’s breathing is audible. Patrick stares out of the window and counts the lights of New York City. Patrick read somewhere that to want things is futile and the only route to success is to take what you need. Snatch with both hands. Seize and conquer and take over like a hostile host. He’s not sure how this applies to Pete but he can’t stop thinking about it as he sits on the floor with his papers and waits for Pete to say something. 

“I can’t,” Pete says eventually. 

“Why not?” Patrick whines, like he’s five years old with a skinned knee. 

“Because… Ugh. Just, give me a minute.”

Patrick can hear a TV in the background, wonders idly at the interior of Pete’s apartment in Williamsburg. Messy, most likely. Crowded with mismatched furniture and soft, touchable fabrics draped over the couch and the bed. Posters on the wall, almost definitely. A TV that’s too big for the living room and plastic CD jewel cases stuffed into a bookcase while paperbacks litter every load-bearing surface. Patrick has no basis on which to hang this theory, he just can’t imagine Pete in an apartment like his own. 

An armchair creaks. The TV volume dies away with the soft click of a closing door. Pete is putting distance between himself and something — some _ one.  _ Actualise it, that’s what Patrick’s therapist would say. Say it out loud. Or, it’s what his therapist would’ve said, before Patrick decided he didn’t have time to see a therapist and who needs a therapist anyway when there’s money and tailored suits and  _ sex  _ to fill the void. 

Schrodinger’s banker: is he empty if no one looks inside?

Patrick says nothing and waits for Pete to speak. 

“Would you at least  _ consider  _ texting me before you call?” Pete asks, like he’s trying to sound pissed off but failing. He sounds fond, mostly, a touch distracted, maybe. “Now isn’t a great time.”

“I could come to your place,” Patrick offers. 

“No.”

“Why not? I don’t care if it’s shitty or whatever.”

“Oh my  _ God, _ of course that’s the first conclusion you jump to,” Pete says, laughing now, like Patrick is hilarious but not intentionally. Like Pete’s laughing  _ at _ him. 

“You don’t have to fucking laugh at me,” Patrick huffs, feeling tired and small and bruised. 

Pete’s sigh is heartfelt. “I can’t just... I have to go, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll take you out somewhere.”

Patrick frowns, his eyes still closed. “You mean, like, on a date?”

“Pizza and beer and awkward conversation? Yes, I think lots of people would call that a date,” Pete says, with audible eye-roll. “But you don’t have to be lots of people. You can call it whatever you feel comfortable with. A lock-up period? Pairs trading? A minimum initial contribution? Does that make you feel better?”

“Did you look those up?” Patrick asks, suspicious. 

Pete laughs again and takes a deep breath. “Listen, Patrick. I like you, okay? You’re the biggest asshole I’ve ever met, but apparently I have no sense of self-preservation because… Because I  _ like  _ you for some fucking reason, but… I  _ have  _ to go. I’ll text you, alright?”

Pete sounds so sincere. So soft and filled with feeling. And maybe Patrick isn’t getting this. He’s trying too hard with this one and he knows it. He excuses it because it seems like Pete’s trying too and Patrick — Patrick feels safer, somehow, knowing Pete cares. 

And, yeah, maybe it’s pointless. Maybe all they’re doing is buoying one another up, leaky lifeboats in a storm, bailing out desperately and hoping for rescue but knowing it’s too late. Maybe that doesn’t matter because Pete  _ likes _ him and Patrick’s... Okay. On a scale of probabilities, he’s at least sixty-three percent certain he likes Pete back. He tips his head back against his desk and closes his eyes against the yellow glare of the overhead light. 

“I’m sorry. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Patrick says, and hangs up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know about you guys, but I'm feeling bone-fucking-weary of the world this week. Is anyone else in need of hugs, good feeling and general distraction? I'm over on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers if anyone's finding things rough. 
> 
> PS: your conspiracy theories re Pete are giving me life in these troubled times. Stay safe.


	9. Chapter 9

True to his word, Pete texts on Saturday morning: an address, a time, and an artsy, black and white dick pic. In the picture, Pete’s dick is a dark curve over his tattoo, his eminently fuckable mouth just visible, the sheets draped artfully over his thigh. The text overlaid reads  _ From Wilmette, with love x  _ and there’s a lot of attention to detail and shading and light. Artistically, it’s a  _ great  _ picture. 

Patrick spends a lot of time looking at it.

The problem with meeting up with Pete on Pete’s turf — the real, soul-crushing truth of it — is that Patrick has no idea what to wear. His wardrobe is all tailored suits and shiny Oxfords, accessorised with cashmere scarves in winter, designer sunnies in summer. He hasn’t been on a date since college. He dresses for board meetings and business luncheons and after-work networking and this, this socially-mandated precursor to sex, is uncharted territory. 

At least, he  _ thinks _ they’re going to have sex.  _ Hopes  _ they’re going to have sex. It would be  _ pleasing _ to him if the evening ended with Pete’s teeth buried in his throat and Pete’s hands wrapped around his wrists. A date does not, as far as he’s aware, preclude the possibility of nasty sex. The dick pic is encouraging. 

Patrick narrows his outfit down based on the metrics of viability: he can’t wear a suit and tie to a rock club, nor can he wear Saturday sweats and a Red Sox jersey. There’s one pair of jeans in the closet, black and tight around the ass and thighs. He adds a dark grey button down, short-sleeved, and a pair of combat boots he bought on impulse but was never brave enough to wear. The overall effect is that of a sexually-confused middle school music teacher. 

He makes it all the way to the elevator before he turns around, dashes back to his wardrobe and snags a cardigan, impossibly soft, the same rich, deep red as a glass of good Burgundy. 

He takes a cab across Manhattan to an address in the Meatpacking District. The club looks dark and sticky and sort of gross and Patrick hovers on the sidewalk looking left and right for Pete, feeling stupid and anxious and horribly out of place. He could get mugged here, he thinks suddenly. Like, that’s an actual, reasonable possibility as he stands around looking obvious and wealthy. He could get  _ stabbed _ and it would be  _ all  _ Pete’s fault. 

A muscular arm snags around his waist and a husky voice breathes in his ear, “Well, fancy seeing you here. You look fucking  _ delicious, _ Wall Street,” and Patrick is so startled he forgets to scream. 

“Asshole,” he says instead, wriggling free so he can punch Pete in the arm. Pete’s dressed in shiny black jeans, a Def Leppard tee and a butter-soft leather jacket that showcases the rounds and planes of his shoulders, biceps, pectorals. Patrick feels dowdy and small, a little brown bird of a thing next to the plumage of Pete’s undeniable  _ handsomeness. _

“That’s not nice,” Pete scolds him. “I said  _ you  _ look delicious — which you do, by the way, I could fucking eat you up with a spoon.” Patrick is not overthinking  _ that _ comment. Nope. Not even a little. You see that? Personal growth. 

Patrick looks Pete up and down and decides that Pete is too fucking gorgeous for the two of them to exist in the same plane of reality. Patrick could toss a rock and hit a dozen things about Pete that he finds attractive. Tossing a rock at Pete might make him feel better about himself, come to think of it. 

Pete sighs. “Now you’re supposed to say something nice to me. And… take it away. Hit me with those sweet, sweet compliment endorphins.”

Patrick rubs his chin and affects a look of deep contemplation. 

“Your head is  _ basically _ the right size for your body.”

“Oh, that’s cold.” Pete leers at Patrick and kisses him, once, on the corner of his mouth.

“I’m a horrible person,” Patrick deadpans.

Pete’s smile is so pretty it makes Patrick’s insides light up like Christmas morning. Pete fingers the collar of Patrick’s cardigan, his thumb dipping down to brush over the flutter of Patrick’s pulse in his throat. He leans closer, his mouth brushing Patrick’s temple and Patrick quivers and wonders if they should fall back into the cab, and then Pete says, “Hold up. Stop. What the fuck. Is that fucking  _ cashmere? _ Who wears a  _ cashmere  _ cardigan to a dive bar?”

Patrick pushes Pete away by his forehead. This is a tactical maneuver on Patrick’s part. Foreheads are unsexy places, associated with childhood fevers, grandma kisses, and unfortunate high school dodgeball incidents.  _ No one _ tells a sexy story about their  _ forehead _ . 

“Hands off the merchandise, Wentz,” he says, in a tone he hopes is playful. “So, what’s the plan? I believe I was promised beer, pizza and what-you-call music.”

Pete rolls his eyes. “Everyone calls it music, Patrick, you’re just a snob about it. Shocking, I know, because you’re  _ so _ open-minded about everything else in your life.”

“I’m open-minded,” Patrick objects. Pete snorts, like he believes this not at all. “I am! I voted for Hilary.”

Pete mimes dunking a basketball. “Score one for finance industry liberalism.”

“You’re making fun of me,” Patrick points out. 

“Maybe I am,” Pete whispers, walking his fingers along the waist of Patrick’s jeans. 

Patrick makes a point of not looking charmed, even if he is. Pete grabs him around the waist and kisses Patrick’s ear and a small lightning bolt of luminous sensation ricochets directly to Patrick’s dick. So maybe Pete’s decided he’s going to kill Patrick via the process of socially inappropriate erogenous zone location in the middle of the Meatpacking District. Patrick can’t even make the obvious joke about their locality. This is the effect Pete’s having on him. It’s ridiculous, is what it is. Patrick is astounded at how ridiculous he’s become. 

He rests a hand against Pete’s chest, feels his heartbeat humming just beneath. “We could… go back to my place,” he says, holding Pete’s impossible whisky-coloured gaze, daring himself not to look away.

Pete looks at Patrick, a small smile curling the corners of his lovely mouth. Fuck, but it’s  _ such  _ a lovely mouth. 

“Pizza first,” Pete says firmly, linking his arm through Patrick’s. Patrick’s disappointed penis laments. “I know an absolutely amazing place, you’re going to  _ love _ it.”

The restaurant isn’t fancy. “This place is, like, demonstrably  _ not _ fancy,” Patrick says. “You said it was fancy.”

The pizza place is a thin slice of New York real estate, a block or so away from the club. There’s a red brick storefront and a tiny seating area with a bench table and high stools and the menu is a chalkboard scrawled with ‘cheese’ or ‘cheese and sausage.’ This being New York, the third option is presumably ‘go fuck yourself.’ The only reason that Patrick would hesitate to describe this particular restaurant as the polar opposite of Delmonico’s is because Italian food is not, as far as he knows, magnetic. 

Pete looks at him askance. “I didn’t say  _ fancy, _ I said  _ amazing.” _

Patrick looks at the chipped formica countertop and the grimy window and then back at Pete. “Uhuh.”

“What’s that phrase about books, and covers, and not judging?”

“Can books transfer botulism?” Patrick asks lightly. “Because pizza restaurants can  _ definitely _ transfer botulism. Choosing pizza restaurants is a very different process to choosing books.”

“Patrick,” Pete says, and Patrick looks at Pete because it’s impossible to look anywhere else when Pete uses his  _ name _ like that, all soft and sultry and serious. “Would you just let me introduce you to nice things instead of bitching about them?”

“I know nice pizza places,” Patrick protests. “There’s this place in Tribeca with—”

Pete makes a loud, wrong-answer game show buzzer sound. 

“Incorrect, Wall Street. You know  _ fancy _ places, and fancy isn’t always  _ good. _ How many pizza places do you know with a line halfway down the block at 8:45?” 

Which, okay. Patrick doesn’t know anywhere like  _ that. _

“I concede,” Patrick says, holding up his hands in defeat. 

Pete grabs his wrist and presses a quick but tender kiss to Patrick’s palm. Their fingers slot together so naturally that holding hands makes sense. Lots of things make sense around Pete: smiling, for example. Laughing. Sleeping. Normal things that normal non-Wall Street executives do all the time, but Patrick’s life isn’t normal. He  _ knows _ it isn’t normal. He’s just not sure what he can do about it. 

When they get their pizza, there’s only one seat at the bench table. Pete gestures to it with the business end of his slice and says, “Hop on, Wall Street,” and Patrick, imagining other, dirtier scenarios in which Pete may invite him to ‘hop on’ things, begins to blush. And, like, honestly? The blushing thing is getting old now. Patrick doesn’t _want_ to blush around Pete. His circulatory system is really working against him.

They arrange themselves; Patrick on the stool and Pete lounging next to him, and Patrick picks at his slice and Pete watches him from those impossible amber eyes. He pulls idly at a string off cheese, uses his thumb to break through the crust.

Pete says, “So, are you going to put that in your mouth, or just play with it?”

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Patrick says, sliding his finger through the sauce. “Anyway. I’m  _ savouring  _ it.”

“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Pete parries.

Patrick gives him a withering look and pulls off a corner of the crust, nibbling it between his front teeth.

“Look at you,” Pete leers. “Pretending you don’t know how to open your mouth nice and wide and stuff something inside.”

“They’re two very different processes,” Patrick huffs.

Pete grins, all teeth and sexy crow’s feet and says, “Eat your pie, there’s a good boy,” and Patrick feels it. That familiar low, humming tingle in the tips of his toes. A pooling warmth just beneath his belt buckle. God, being told what to do shouldn’t have this effect on him. But it does, so he reaches down and grabs his slice and takes a tiny taste. He hums, chewing cautiously. And then he takes another, larger bite. He chews, swallows, savours. And then he makes a frankly ridiculous, pornographic sound and groans.

“Jesus, this is…”

“Fucking  _ good, _ right?” Pete says, his smug grin flecked with crumbs. 

“Not as good as home, but close,” Patrick agrees, licking his fingers and watching the way Pete watches his mouth. 

Maybe he makes it showier, on purpose. Maybe he lingers as he sucks away a smudge of sauce from his thumb. Maybe he moans, just a little. Maybe he likes the way Pete’s throat contracts as he swallows. 

“You okay, Williamsburg?” he asks. Pete jumps. 

“Yeah,” Pete says hoarsely, still staring at Patrick’s mouth. He clears his throat. “Uh — What were we...? So, like. Pizza. New York or Chicago style?”

Patrick curls his lip. “I can’t believe you’re going to look me in the eye and ask me that. Me. A native Chicagoan.”

“It’s a valid question,” Pete protests. 

“Oh, yeah. Totally. Uh, Ernie Banks called, he says you’re no longer allowed to cross the state line into Illinois.”

While Patrick’s saying this, their mouths move closer, their smiles almost touching. Patrick tingles with the proximity of Pete’s touch. Pete huffs a short laugh and touches his lips to Patrick’s. It’s not a kiss like any other they’ve shared before. It’s sweet, tender, Pete cuddled up close between Patrick’s thighs, his hands light on Patrick’s hips, his mouth gentle. Patrick could kiss Pete like this for the rest of his life, maybe.

When Pete pulls away, his eyes are shiny with hope. He kisses Patrick’s cheek, and his temple, and his earlobe and he whispers, “You’re a lot more fun on  _ this _ side of the tracks, Wall Street, we should do this more often.” And Patrick’s so blown away by how it feels to let his guard down that he doesn’t even punch Pete in the dick for being an asshole. He just rocks forward, rests his forehead briefly on Pete’s shoulder and presses his hand into Pete’s back and fucking hangs on like his life is a shipwreck and Pete is the last life raft.

“What next,” he says hoarsely, as Pete raises his hand and kisses each of Patrick’s pizza-greasy fingertips in turn. 

“Music,” Pete says. “You’re going to  _ love _ this band. Hand to God.”

“Is that the band name?” Patrick asks dubiously. “Nothing good ever comes of religious references in band names. That’s just facts.”

Pete laughs and tosses an arm around his shoulders. 

For the sake of full and frank disclosure? Patrick does not love the band. The band is, somehow, even worse than Pete’s band, and that’s saying something because Pete’s band is a truly awful band and Patrick dislikes them — musically — very much. This band is a crime against all things music. This band is a creative disaster rankable on the INES.

But Patrick likes curling his hands around Pete’s neck in the dark, likes the rock of their hips in time to the beat and the way Pete nibbles soft, tender kisses to his mouth, his throat. Patrick likes that. Patrick – Okay. Patrick likes  _ Pete. _

“Come back to my place,” Pete says, later, on the sidewalk. Patrick looks at him doubtfully. “Come on, why not?”

There is an unmapped  _ continent _ of reasons that Patrick shouldn’t go back to Pete’s place. Patrick could list them, count them off one by one, and quickly run out of fingers and toes. “Is that a good idea?” he asks. 

“It’s not far from here,” Pete says, pulling Patrick close and kissing him softly, his palms pressed to Patrick’s face. It’s not an answer and they both know it, but Pete’s clearly hedging on Patrick’s common sense dribbling down into his groin.

Against all better judgement, Patrick nods and hands Pete his phone to redirect their Uber. Pete hands Patrick his leather jacket in exchange, warm with his body heat and long enough to fall over Patrick’s hands. 

_ Not far from here _ turns out to be the fucking  _ Bronx _ . It’s so far from Manhattan it might as well be Connecticut. Or New Zealand. Or the planetary surface of _ Mars.  _ The buildings drop in both height and monetary value. This isn’t the New York he’s used to.

“I thought you lived in Brooklyn,” he says, teeth gritted as the car pulls up outside of Pete’s dowdy-looking building. And he’s not being a snob or anything, it’s just the Bronx is a long way from the Upper West Side. The broken windows emphasise that.

“I  _ work _ in Brooklyn,” Pete corrects him. “I  _ live _ in the Bronx. I don’t think I’ve lied to you, you’ve just made assumptions.”

“And you allowed me to continue making them,” Patrick points out. “You’ve made me feel stupid.”

“Feeling stupid about where I live is a really stupid thing to feel stupid about,” Pete says. “By definition, you’re making yourself feel stupid, Stupid.”

Patrick glares at him. “I hate you, you know.”

Pete smiles and looks lovely in the yellow glare of the streetlights. Pete’s hair is tousled and sweat-rough from the club, his complicated shirt studded with pointless  _ zippers _ hanging loose on his frame. He stretches, exposes a thin band of coppery belly and straining biceps. Pete’s far too qualified at looking sexy, Patrick thinks. Pete’s pretty at a postgraduate level. 

“So this is where the magic happens,” Patrick teases, as Pete leads him through a security door with no lock, up a stairway and along a hallway that smells strongly of bleach, faintly of piss. 

“Casa de Wentz, sorry it’s not the summer, or I could’ve taken you to the place out in the Hamptons,” Pete murmurs, and pushes Patrick up against the wall.

The space between their mouths is measurable in molecules. Patrick whispers, “The Hamptons? Overrated,” and curls his fingers down the front of Pete’s jeans. 

“Wall Street,” Pete says helplessly. 

Pete kisses him. Kissing makes the unlovely building seem lovelier. They kiss in the doorway, against the stairwell, tripping over one another on the steps, against the hallway wall, outside of Pete’s door. Patrick burns up, feverish and desperate, his hands clawing under Pete’s shirt. He swells in his jeans, his hardness Pavlovian. Pete pulls back, eyes bright, mouth wet. 

“You’re so fucking…” He trails off and nips a hard kiss to Patrick’s throat. “I could suck you off right here. Eat you out against the door. Fuck you til you scream and—”

“ — And someone calls the police,” Patrick finishes, his dick-thoughts protesting wildly. “Yeah, no. Bed. Take me to bed and do  _ all _ those things.”

“Here, though,” Pete mumbles into Patrick’s throat, palming at Patrick’s hardness. “Don’t you think here is good?”

“Bed,” Patrick says firmly, and honestly, he deserves points for forming coherent thoughts, let alone coherent sentences. “Or, like, floor or table or couch or shower or kitchen-fucking-sink. I don’t care. Just open the door.”

“The thing is,” Pete says, pausing and looking less horny, more sheepish. “I haven’t exactly prepared for visitors. So, like. Could you just… give me a minute?”

Patrick looks at Pete, then at the door, then back at Pete. His thoughts are capped in his cock. He’s barely lucid. 

“You want me to wait in the hallway while you clean?” he asks slowly. 

He can’t believe he’s saying that out loud. Patrick takes a step back from the metaphorical ledge of Liking Pete, and instead peers over the ledge labelled Pete Is Hiding Something. A wife, maybe. A meth lab, probably. The previous eighteen victims of the infamous Manhattan serial killer, almost definitely. “No,” Patrick says, with heart. “No, I’m not — That’s fucking  _ outrageous. _ I’m not doing that.” 

Pete gives him a sad, puppy dog look. 

“Ten seconds,” Pete implores, unlocking the door and opening it a crack. A hallway is suggested, dimly-lit, a shadowy mountain of shoes and coats on a rack by the door. Patrick doesn’t see an  _ obvious _ sex dungeon. “I’ll be right back.”

“You can’t be serious,” Patrick starts. Pete melts through the door like a shadow and closes it behind him with a click. The door looks back at Patrick with a sense of smug and lockable superiority. “Hey!” Patrick objects, knocking sharply. “You’re not fucking  _ serious?” _

The door opens and Pete’s eyes glow from the gloom. “Ten seconds,” he implores. Before Patrick can argue, it clicks closed again. Patrick is no less pissed off the second time because who does this? He considers calling an Uber. He considers recreational murder. He considers many things but what he  _ does _ is huff, tug Pete’s jacket around him a little more firmly, and sit on the floor outside of Pete’s apartment. “Fucker,” he hisses under his breath. 

It takes, like, significantly more than ten seconds for Pete to come back, and when he does, he’s out of breath, like he just spent ten minutes on a stairmaster. “Hi,” he pants cheerfully. “Come on in.”

“You don’t get to say that like I just showed up,” Patrick grouses, following Pete into the hallway that smells of recent Febreeze and old Chinese food, still dimly-lit because Pete, apparently, does his cleaning in the dark.

Then, Pete kisses him and Patrick forgets to, in no particular order, be mad, speak English,  _ breathe.  _

“You’re so fucking gorgeous,” Pete tells him, pressing Patrick up against the wall in a full-body grope. Patrick opens his mouth to protest but Pete talks faster, races Patrick to an inevitable conclusion of sex and his messy mouth on Patrick’s skin. “So fucking sexy, love your body.” He hooks his teeth gently into Patrick’s throat. He also gets a hand under Patrick’s shirt and plucks gently at his nipples, and that. That is  _ very  _ distracting. “God, I want to kiss every inch of you. Take you apart.”

“You’re an asshole,” Patrick gasps, clutching two handfuls of Pete’s hair, kissing along the length of Pete’s throat. “It’s cool, though. I’m totally into assholes.”

Pete steers him past a tiny kitchen and tinier bathroom and two closed doors, into a bedroom with an unmade bed. The sheets smell of skin and salt and the faintest clinging ghost of cheap fabric softener. Pete’s shoes litter the floor. The night stand is stacked high with dog-eared paperbacks and half-drunk glasses of water, a bass guitar propped in the corner and swaddled with hoodies. There are posters on the wall — Star Wars, Metallica, fucking  _ Louis-Ferdinand Céline _ — and an open bureau haemhorraging shirts over the floor. It’s so very Pete, distilled, without outside influence. Like someone took the very essence of Pete Wentz, sifted it into a cocktail shaker and poured it all over the room. 

A forensic scientist in the field of cheating scumbags, Patrick searches for trace samples of another human; hair on the pillow, perfume on the sheets, abandoned panties stuffed under the edge of the mattress. He finds nothing.

“Nice place,” Patrick says breathlessly. 

Pete gives him a wolfish grin, all teeth and sparkling, endless eyes. “Glad you like it,” he murmurs. He reaches into his shorts and pulls out his dick, hard and gorgeous. “Suck me off, beautiful. Make it good.”

Patrick laughs breathlessly and does just that, Pete salty warm and bitter on his tongue. It’s easy not to think when they’re doing this. He likes it, and he likes sucking Pete’s dick, and he likes Pete and with his mouth stuffed full he can confuse the three. Let them overlap and change like the sea.

Patrick likes Pete when Pete sinks his teeth into Patrick’s bottom lip, and when Pete pulls back with a toothy smile and whispers, “You have such a slutty mouth, Wall Street, it makes me want to debauch you.” He likes it when Pete ties him to the headboard and fingers him until he begs, eats him out until he’s desperate. On his back on the mattress and looking up into Pete’s happy eyes, Pete swollen and hard inside of him and his own stiff dick acquiring friction burn against Pete’s tattoo, Patrick likes that, too. 

This requires double-jointed academic manipulation of everything Patrick fundamentally believes he  _ is. _ It’s a lot, is what it is. It’s a lot to take in, but he’s trying, and he thinks he’d be okay with it, given time, but —  _ but. _ Fuck. Pete hits his prostate and Patrick is so very done with thinking.

“I like you,” he gasps, mouth wet, Pete’s hands grippy on his hips. 

Pete hooks his teeth into Patrick’s shoulder, bites down hard and muffles his groan as he finishes, grinding his dick deep and hard into Patrick’s ass. So close he could cry, his dick a hard and angry throb, Patrick keens Pete's name and arches his hips. Pete spits into his palm and jacks Patrick off until he comes, his calluses rough on Patrick’s dick. Patrick likes that, also, and demonstrates his appreciation with a soft, breathless whine. 

They stay like that, catching their breath, and Pete is still inside of him and Patrick’s sticky and sore and trying not to think about what he just said out loud.  _ Idiot, _ he thinks viciously, about himself, because of course Pete doesn’t like him. Pete likes  _ fucking _ him and that’s fine, because Patrick likes Pete fucking him, too. The sheets bunch a little under his fingernails and Patrick forces himself to relax. 

“I like you too,” Pete whispers shakily, his hips still rolling. He traces his damp fingertips from Patrick’s throat to his pubic bone, over each notch of his ribs on the way. “More than you deserve,” he adds, his fingers pushed to the base of his cock, where Patrick’s still stretched around him. 

“Would you believe me if I told you I’m actually trying right now?” Patrick asks, squirming. Pete slides a finger in alongside his cock, easy with lube, and Patrick whines, feeling exposed and overtouched and sensitive. 

“Good.” Pete rubs his sweaty forehead against Patrick’s neck like a house cat. He pulls out with care, loosens the ties at Patrick’s wrists. He deals with the condom, hands Patrick a shirt he grabs from the floor. “Bathroom’s just next door. The  _ open _ door. I have a roommate.  _ Don’t _ go in his room.” 

“Is he home?” Patrick asks, instantly horrified by the notion that someone might’ve heard the ridiculous sounds that fall out of his mouth when Pete is fucking him soundly into the mattress. His insides curl up at the edges. He wonders if he can kill Pete stone dead with the force of his glare. 

Pete waggles his eyebrows and looks stupid and annoying and so fucking handsome Patrick could pass out. 

Pete says: “He once slept through Fourth of July. They lit the fireworks right outside of his bedroom and he didn’t stir. I thought he was dead. Do you think you’re louder than patriotism, Wall Street?”

“Oh God,” Patrick whispers, blushing. “I think I’d like to die right now. You should’ve told me, you absolute asshole, I—”

“He’s not home, drama queen. Go — clean up. Unless you need my help with those hard-to-reach places.”

“Fuck you,” Patrick says, flipping Pete off as he stalks from the room. 

“You already did,” Pete calls after him. 

Patrick cleans up in the strange bathroom with its warped mirror and bathtub stain of unknown provenance and spidering watermarks on the ceiling. He washes his hands with Pete’s unscented soap. (So, like, that smell? That spicy musky good-earth  _ smell _ that clings to Pete? It’s not even  _ soap. _ That’s just Pete’s scent. Pete is actually made of dark chocolate and cinnamon and fucking  _ sex _ .) Patrick pulls a face at himself in the mirror.  _ Idiot, _ he thinks again, slipping on Pete’s shirt. Pete didn’t offer him underwear so Patrick hurries past the door of the unknown roommate, his wound-tender junk wobbling just under the hem, and collapses down onto the bed.

“Can I borrow some underwear?” Patrick asks. Pete cups his ass in one hand and squeezes, digs his fingertips down between Patrick’s cheeks and Patrick whines. Where they’re going they won’t  _ need _ underwear he thinks, in Doc Brown’s voice.

“Patrick,” Pete says, sounding fond and happy. Patrick wants to roll around in the way Pete says his name because it’s not like when Pete calls him  _ Wall Street. _ It’s sweeter than that, softly astonished, like he can’t quite believe Patrick is real. “Patrick,” Pete says again, carding his fingers through Patrick’s hair. “Patrick,” Pete says once more, shifting on his side and rubbing his nose against Patrick’s. “Patrick, Patrick, Patrick.”

“Pete,” Patrick says, and then he kisses him. He pours everything into this kiss. Patrick wants to sink under the surface of this kiss and fall asleep for a hundred years. Or maybe Patrick’s been asleep this whole time and the kiss is what wakes him. His pulse ignites, syrup-slow and hot. He twists a hand into Pete’s hair and holds his mouth close and shivers under Pete’s self-immolating touch. 

“I like you so much,” Patrick whispers, honest in the darkness.

Pete’s eyes glow. “What a coincidence — I  _ like _ you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys are so, so awesome and I can't thank you enough for all the positivity and the encouragement. I wouldn't be writing this if it wasn't for you, so thank you for indulging me. 
> 
> If anyone wants to chat, as always you can find me on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers - we've (almost) made it through another week. Can you believe?


	10. Chapter 10

Things go dangerously well for the next couple of weeks. 

Well, _kind of._ They have great sex and, like, the _snuggle_ is real and that’s — Honestly, that’s great. But they bicker constantly about Pete’s inability to relax his schedule and see Patrick any day of the week that isn’t Saturday and Pete’s opinion on corporate obligations and Patrick’s unwavering belief that running a tattoo shop is basically the adult version of playing with crayons for a living. It’s all superficial, until it’s not. 

It starts like this: 

Patrick’s mom calls him on Wednesday night, around eight. Patrick’s still in the office which is unsurprising for him, but apparently surprising for his mother, who chides him and tells him to go home. He assures her he will, knowing that he won’t, and they talk about Kevin’s kids and Meagan’s promotion for a while. Then his mom says, ‘Are you coming to your cousin’s wedding?’ and Patrick says, ‘Uh, no, probably not,’ and his mom says, ‘Why not?’ and Patrick says, ‘Work, ma, I have to work.’ 

And his mom hits the goddamn roof.

The dressing down is second only to things meted out by the Department of Justice. Patrick is subjected to a character assasination — at the hands of his own _mother_ — that would make Robert Shapiro scream uncle. For thirteen minutes and twenty-three seconds, Patrick holds the receiver an inch or two away from his ear and winces his way through accusations and recriminations and a recount of _every single horrible idea_ he acted upon as a teenager. When she pauses, when she takes a deep breath that seems less like a full stop and more like a conversational comma, he breaks in quickly. 

“Do I have a plus one?” he asks, because the only thing that’s going to get him through a Midwestern family wedding is the assured confirmation of a post-party blowjob. “I’m only going if there’s a plus one.”

“Why do you need a plus one?” she asks. At some point, he’s going to think about that, about the way she phrases it, and he’s going to feel insulted but that time is not now.

Patrick rolls his eyes at a stack of files. “Well, I’m actually a serial killer, and I thought I’d bring along my next victim. It makes sense to spread them across a larger geographical area, drag in different jurisdictions of law enforcement, confuse the Feds. You know?”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,” she tells him crisply. 

“But the _highest_ form of intelligence,” he finishes. Everyone always forgets the second half of Oscar Wilde quotes. “Anyway. I need a plus one for the normal, ordinary reason anyone asks for a plus one. I’ve been seeing this guy...”

His mom shifts so quickly from psychopath to loving matriarch that Patrick feels dizzy. 

“Patrick! That would be _wonderful,”_ she coos, audibly beaming. “You never bring anyone home! I’ll tell your aunt right away. Tell me _everything_ about him.”

What Patrick does _not_ tell his mother is that he’s found a tattoo artist who fucks him past the point of sensibility. That is not a detail a mother needs to hear. Instead, he pours out all of the unacknowledged, _tender_ thoughts he has about Pete. He tells her about Pete’s sunshiney smile and his dorky socks and he says Pete makes him _happy._ This pulls him up short because, honestly, happiness hasn’t been a regular feature on his emotional Rolodex for a long, long time. But he is. He’s happy, and it’s because of Pete. 

“I can’t wait to meet him,” his mom says as they end the call.

Patrick winces uncomfortably. “Yeah. He’s just — He’s super excited to meet you, too. Give everyone hugs from me.”

“This is going to be so much fun!”

“Yeah. It’s — It’s definitely going to be something.”

So now Patrick has to find a way to persuade his boss that he’s not lacking commitment to the company work ethic by asking for a couple of vacation days _and_ he has to convince Pete to go to an out-of-state wedding with him. Patrick’s life is not a Kafka novel. It’s a fucking _Rimbaud._

On Saturday, Patrick makes the effort to cook something. Not because he believes he can bribe Pete with food, but because he hasn’t cooked for Pete before and he has a nice kitchen and he sees some _gorgeous_ tuna at the organic fish market. So, he buys it, and he buys rice and seaweed and sake and everything else and he devotes himself to making sashimi and nigiri and avocado hand rolls for two hours, following complicated how-to guides on YouTube. 

Food done, Patrick dresses carefully in a charcoal shirt and tailored pants. Pete likes him in buttons. Not that he’s said as much, but when Patrick wears a shirt or his Red Sox jersey, Pete unwraps him like a birthday gift. No one’s ever done that before. Patrick styles his hair and swaps out his glasses for contacts because he knows removing his glasses amplifies his fuckability by a percentage of at least twenty-three. But, also, tripping over the edge of his living room rug because he can’t fucking _see_ will crush the likelihood of Pete fucking him by the power of ten. It’s a complicated mathematical problem. Fortunately, Patrick’s good at math.

Patrick makes his way around the apartment like a nesting bird. He fluffs pillows. He lights candles. He is, by all accounts, an attentive and exceptional host. Patrick is actually _excited_ about this. 

“Why are there _so many_ weirdos on the subway?” Pete asks, when Patrick lets him into the apartment, his coat smelling of frigid Eastern Seaboard air. “More to the point, why do I attract them? I’m, like, The Weirdo Whisperer, classically trained in the art of summoning every dude with his dick out in a five-carriage radius.”

Patrick laughs and takes the six-pack of Miller Pete hands him. “That’s not the way radiuses work. Uh, radii? I don’t know. Anyway, they’re not, like… subway trains don’t have a fulcrum. Well, they _do,_ but not one that covers five carriages. You, like, your _radius,_ is small in the scenario.”

“God, I love it when you talk nerdy to me,” Pete says, his smile making Patrick a little too warm, a little weak at the knees. He drops the beer onto the bureau before it becomes collateral damage. “C’mere,” Pete adds as an afterthought, and he takes Patrick’s face in his hands and kisses him, deep and slow and Patrick melts into slush.

They kiss all the way to the kitchen, eyes closed, hands occupied, making it there unscathed only by luck and Patrick’s habit of traversing his apartment in the dark. Patrick’s back hits the refrigerator, his wrists wrapped in Pete’s hands and pinned over his head. Pete attacks his throat, biting down under Patrick’s collar, sucking kisses to Patrick’s pulse. Their dicks brush – Pete’s in his sweats, Patrick’s behind the brass cage of button and zipper, his nails digging into his palms. Patrick arches his hips, spreads his legs, gives every non-verbal cue he has for _Please yes, fuck me, please, just—_

Pete pulls back, breathing hard, his mouth kiss-swollen and red and shiny and smiling. He looks so lovely, the loveliest thing in an apartment filled with lovely and expensive things. His nose touches Patrick’s, cold from outdoors. Patrick strains against Pete’s handcuff-hold and pecks a tender kiss to Pete’s mouth and feels so suddenly _lucky._

Spin the roulette wheel enough times, it has to come up black, right?

“Wall Street, I’m gonna fuck you until you scream,” Pete rasps, his voice rough and dirty, his eyes glittering, his dick hot and urgent against Patrick’s thigh. Patrick makes a desperate noise: he likes that idea _so much._ Then Pete stops and looks across the kitchen counter. “Wait, is that… Did you _make_ sushi?”

Patrick stares at Pete, thoroughly astonished. Sushi is not important right now. “Not important right now. I have something else you can eat. I’ll give you a hint — it’s my ass.”

“Nuh-uh. You fucking did, you made _sushi._ I love sushi!”

Patrick’s penis lags. He pushes his hips to Pete’s and whines. “Are you fucking kidding? Orgasms first, sushi later.”

But Pete is made of stronger stuff than Patrick’s erection, or else he really does love sushi. He drags Patrick to the kitchen island by the wrist, babbling about a place in Brooklyn that serves _the fucking best tuna rolls in New York, seriously, you have to try them._ When he sits at a stool, he wrestles Patrick onto his lap, situates his still-hard cock against the warm round of Patrick’s ass and smooths a casual hand over Patrick’s crotch as he feeds him flavourful bites from his fingers.

“This is disgusting, there are chopsticks _right there,”_ Patrick objects, leaning into Pete’s arm around his waist and thinking he’d rather die than stop licking soy sauce from Pete’s fingertips.

Pete grins at him and slicks Patrick’s throat with a salt-and-sesame kiss. “Patrick, please. I’ve eaten your _ass._ Not just once, like, _many_ times. How is this worse?”

“Yeah, _that’s_ where I want to imagine your fingers when you’re shoving them in my mouth.”

Pete turns him, bodily, wrestling Patrick until his thighs are draped over Pete’s hips and Pete’s hands are on his face, smoothing through his hair and leaving it wrecked and Pete laughs as he tilts Patrick’s face up and looks at him with those remarkable, whisky-coloured eyes.

“You don’t want to kiss me?” he asks innocently, tracing the pad of his thumb over Patrick’s bottom lip. “Your slutty mouth wants to kiss me. In fact, I think...” Pete leans closer. “Yeah, your slutty mouth says it wants my dick. God, your mouth is so slutty.”

Patrick chokes. “Are you slut shaming my mouth?”

“No, I’m very much _encouraging_ your mouth’s sluttiness.”

“Mouths aren’t independently slutty. It’s just my mouth.”

“Your mouth is _so_ slutty, it whispers slutty things to me while you’re sleeping. One of these days, I’m gonna wake you up like that. Sliding my dick into your slutty mouth.”

“Fuck you,” Patrick breathes, so hard he might go blind with it.

“Are you _blushing,_ Wall Street?”

He punctuates this with a hard nip to Patrick’s earlobe. It spikes an electric current to Patrick’s misbehaving, attention-seeking genitals. 

“Shut up!”

“About your mouth generally? Or about me fucking it?”

“Either! Both, maybe. God.”

There is no artistic description for the colour that heats Patrick’s cheeks. Half reactionary embarrassment, half blood-heating arousal, it crawls from his collar to his hairline. Laughing with Pete, Patrick leans weakly into his chest and fingers Pete’s collar bone through his shirt. Lucky, right?

“So, not to change the subject, because fucking my mouth is absolutely a thing you can do, but there’s something I wanted to ask you first,” Patrick says, his heartbeat humming in his ears. It’s just a long weekend in Chicago, not a wedding. Well, it _is_ a wedding but, like, not _theirs._ Patrick takes a deep breath and tries to slow his rabbiting heart.

“Yeah?” Pete prompts him, sliding his hands into the back of Patrick’s pants and cupping his ass. There’s a smudge of soy sauce on the corner of his mouth. It’s beguilingly sexy, which is a terrible sign, because who finds soy sauce _sexy?_ He’s a deviant, aroused by condiments. 

“Do you own a suit?” Patrick asks, grasping at the slippery ends of his courage.

Pete’s eyebrows migrate casually for his hairline. “Yes, I own a suit. Why? Am I going to court? Is this a bust? You’re legally obliged to tell me you’re an undercover cop if I ask.”

“Shut up. It’s not a big deal,” Patrick says. “But my cousin is getting married in Chicago in a couple of months and my mom is kicking my _ass_ about showing up with a plus one and I thought maybe you could come with me.”

Pete leans back and breaks all points of contact between them aside from the structurally integral ones. 

“The Chicago in New York?” Pete asks warily. “There’s actually a Chicago in New York, and that’s where the wedding is?”

Patrick shrugs. “The Chicago in Chicago. My aunt’s been planning this since Emma was, you know, _two,_ so it’s sort of a big thing. For them, anyway. So, suits are mandatory, which is good! It’s good because you’re gonna look so fucking hot in a suit. I’m gonna suck your dick so much for this. They’ve hired out the venue for four days – crazy, right? – and I just thought…”

Patrick slides to a messy halt. Pete doesn’t say anything. His eyes are inscrutable, his thick mouth a sloping line. He avoids Patrick’s eyes. “Uh,” he says, stalling. “Right. Yeah. That’s… okay.”

“I’ll pay for our flights, the hotel, it won’t cost you a cent,” Patrick offers, slithering off Pete’s lap. 

Pete’s frown deepens. “Can you _stop_ making every single thing about money? I don’t need you to pay for me. It’s just…”

He’s going to say no.

It’s obvious that he’s going to say no and he’ll know Patrick is having heart-feelings and Patrick knows, in a too-fast heartbeat, that the humiliation is going to kill him. There is no rewind button. No do over. No hard reset. Patrick leans back against the counter with his pulse in the back of his throat and prays for death.

“You don’t want to,” Patrick says, his gut clenching. He’s scared, is the thing. Scared of how Pete’s got him feeling some kind of way. Scared that falling in love is like falling off a cliff. No one talks about the landing. No one points out it might hurt. Patrick clings to the grassy edge by his bloody fingernails and fills his stomach with plunging dread. 

“I didn’t say that,” Pete replies. “That’s not what I said.”

“You didn’t say it, but that’s what you meant.”

“It’s – Four days? I can’t just skip town for four days.”

“It’s a long weekend. Two of those days are Saturday and Sunday,” Patrick points out. 

“My busiest days.”

“Just have Gabe and Travis take care of the shop, it’s not a big deal—”

“Just because it’s not a big deal _for you_ doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal.”

Patrick glares at him. “Look, if _my_ boss can cope without me for a couple days, what’s your excuse, exactly?”

“What the fuck is _that_ supposed to mean?” Pete asks hotly.

“You’re a _tattoo artist,”_ Patrick snaps, with sarcastic air quotes. “Not a heart surgeon.”

“My life isn’t just the shop and _you,_ there are other things going on and I can’t just take off for the best part of a week,” Pete says. He grabs a shank of his hair and tugs. His irritation is palpable. 

“Like what? What else do you have to do, Pete? Your stupid band? Is that it?”

Pete looks furious. “You don’t know anything about my life.”

“Because you won’t tell me!” Patrick explodes. 

“Because I barely _know_ you, and now you expect me to fly to _Chicago_ to meet your family like we’re — like we’re—”

“A couple?” Patrick asks, his voice acidic. Pete stares down at the counter and refuses to look up.

Saturdays only. Text first. Early morning phone calls from the bathroom. Unable to excuse himself from things that aren’t Patrick or work, because he’s needed — expected — somewhere else. With someone else.

“I know you’re married,” Patrick blurts out. 

Pete looks at him, visibly horrified. “Excuse me?”

“I know you’re married and I know you’re going to stay with her and I thought this kind of thing would be a deal-breaker but I don’t – I don’t know. Fuck you. I formally uninvite you to the wedding you don’t want to go to anyway.” 

“You’re dumping this on me and making it my fault. That’s not fair.”

It hits Patrick like a sledgehammer. They were never working toward a relationship. Patrick is a decent and convenient outlet for Pete’s less-than-heterosexual tendencies. It’s not like he’s the first guy to have a wife and a boyfriend. Probably, Patrick shouldn’t care. Probably, Patrick should’ve seen this coming. Instead, he’s blindsided, the wind knocked out of him. He turns away from Pete and sloshes wine he grabs from the chiller into a glass he grabs from the cabinet. He takes an aggressive swallow and feels it sour his throat. 

“I know it’s not your fault,” Patrick says. It tastes ashy on his tongue. “It’s fine. You’re married, no big deal. I mean, clearly it’s not a big deal to you.”

Pete looks at Patrick and the fury bleeds out of him. He looks at Patrick with such enduring sadness in his eyes. He slumps on his stool and looks small and fragile. “Is that what you think of me?”

“I don’t actually know you at all,” Patrick says, passing a hand over his eyes. If life is fair, a sinkhole will open in the Upper West Side and drag Patrick under to a place he can calcify, unbothered by the emotional turmoil of a fucking wedding invitation. Geography continues to conspire against him and the ground remains firmly intact.

“Right,” Pete says quietly, his expression closing like a fist.

“I won’t tell your wife,” Patrick says. “If that’s what you’re concerned about. God. Like I don’t have better things to do.”

Pete shrugs and stares at the counter like it owes him an explanation. His colour is high, two spots of red on his cheekbones. His knuckles are very white against his dark hands. 

“We can still hook up,” Patrick offers. He is brisk, businesslike. He gives no indication that his heart is fracturing behind his ribs. What the fuck? He doesn’t even _like_ Pete. “No reason we can’t still blow off steam.”

“Have you thought about yoga?” Pete asks archly. “Or joining a gym?”

“Maybe I prefer it this way. Maybe fucking a married guy is better for me — you won’t expect anything from me,” Patrick says and Pete flinches back. 

“Right,” Pete says again, and Patrick is so bad at this, so astonishingly awful at not hurting people. 

Patrick reaches into his pants and grasps his dick. He holds Pete’s eyes and strokes himself until he’s hard and fat and leaking. “I still want this,” he says, reaching for Pete’s hand and guiding it to his cock. Pete’s fingers close around him, he strokes like an instinct, breathing into Patrick’s mouth. Patrick fills Pete’s palm so perfectly. “I think you want it, too. Fuck me.”

“Patrick,” Pete says warningly. He looks a little despairing, a little like he just got kicked in the stomach. That’s love, though, isn’t it? It’s just a series of half-hopeful moments, a handful of happiness waiting for inevitable implosion. 

Patrick takes Pete’s face in his hands and grinds his dick into Pete’s fist and says again, “Fuck me.”

“We need a—”

“We don’t _need_ anything. I’m clean and I can take it. Fuck me.”

Pete swallows heavily and pulls a face like the inside of his mouth tastes sour. He sighs and digs his thumb into the small of Patrick’s back. Patrick can pinpoint the second he gives in. “Against the wall, hands over your head.”

Patrick does as Pete asks, kicks off his pants, wraps his thighs around Pete’s hips and closes his eyes as Pete pushes into him dry. It hurts; less like pain, more like forgetting. They’re not people this time. They’re nothing but a collection of blood-warm moving parts functioning together to create a small fire that lights the darkness inside of them. They’re abstract, a concept, ungrounded by reality. They race one another to nothingness. They fuck for savage non-existence. 

But Patrick still arches into Pete’s hold on his hips, the bluish bruises that bloom like flowers on the inside of his thighs. He catches the smell of Pete in his nose, the taste on his tongue, and he stores it away, between layers of tissue paper. Pete fucks him hard, fast and doesn’t let up until he comes, pounding into Patrick with controlled force. The dry hand on Patrick’s dick feels good, his or Pete’s or both, it doesn’t matter. He comes against Pete’s stomach, his groan muffled on a bitten lip.

It feels black hole empty.

At first, they don’t move, their breathing hard, Pete’s softening dick slick against Patrick’s thigh. Pete hasn’t undressed, his sweats shoved off his hips. Patrick’s pants trail from one ankle, his shirt buttoned and wet with come. He’s an unwanted gift, it seems. Still wrapped. He presses his wrist to his sweaty forehead and avoids Pete’s eyes.

“See?” he says, with such cheerful desperation. “This is all we need.”

For a second, he thinks Pete might reply. Pete’s breath hitches, sharp, like silk over razorblades. Patrick realises suddenly that Pete isn’t just furious. Pete is — and here he pauses — Pete is _hurting._ Patrick wants to take it back: the invitation, the fight, the stupid way he handled it, the pity fuck. Patrick is a disaster. 

Pete lowers him carefully to the floor. He steps away and tucks his wet red junk back into his sweats. Pete grabs his jacket and his beanie and stands in the arch of the kitchen door and looks at Patrick like he’s thinking about saying something. Patrick looks at the floor, pantsless and sweating, his hair dishevelled and a low, throbbing soreness between his legs. Pete closes his mouth with grim determination. 

“Pete,” Patrick says softly.

Pete nods, shrugs, shakes his head but he doesn’t say a word. The door slams and Patrick is left alone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments and feedback on tumblr are giving me so much inspiration to keep writing right now, honestly, if not for you guys I'd just spend my days staring at the wall, so thank you all so much for being so awesome.
> 
> Hope everyone is doing okay in this strange new world we live in - if anyone needs to talk or vent I'm on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers.


	11. Chapter 11

When Patrick responds to the fight by smashing his own personal best and working a hundred-and-eighteen-hour work week, he starts to think there might be something fundamentally wrong with him. He knows it isn’t normal, but he knows it in an abstract way. The knowledge is more of a concept, really. It doesn’t apply to him. 

Joe refuses to look at him. When he talks, he’s brusque. He speaks in conversational ingredients, as if using one too many will spoil the whole batch. Patrick would like it immensely if Joe invited him out for a drink. It would be nice to have an excuse to leave the office. 

Joe doesn’t invite him. Patrick doesn’t ask.

Patrick’s sadness amplifies in his chest, vibrates there like a hummingbird. It’s that or he now has tachycardia. Is that depression or a heart murmur? Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, it really could go either way. 

He leaves the office at lunchtime on Saturday. Not because he has anywhere to go, but because the janitor keeps giving him irritated looks and asking if he can vacuum under Patrick’s desk. He doesn’t want to go home, so he walks. He walks along Broadway with its blocky billboards and onto Park Avenue. He skirts Union Square Park and block after block of offices and apartment buildings, following his own billowing breath until he hits Grand Central.

Still, Patrick’s not sure he’s outrun his own self-induced sadness. He keeps walking until he gets to the northernmost end of Central Park, enters off 110 th where he stops and buys a coffee and a donut and asks himself if he thinks he can outrun his terrible choices if he just keeps heading north. Like, maybe Pete won’t exist in Yonkers. It makes sense: Pete is a good thing and nothing good happens in  _ Yonkers. _

He drinks his terrible coffee and tosses his terrible donut in the trash and stares moodily into the middle distance and pretends for a while that he’s Marlon Brando in a very serious, Oscar-worthy role and not a stockbroker in the middle of a life crisis of his own creation. He gets cold. He walks Central Park from one end to the other, down to Columbus Circle and past the fountains at the Time Warner building. With nothing else to do, and his soulless apartment unappealing, he walks back toward Wall Street and figures, if nothing else, he owes himself a decent coffee.

There’s a family in line at the coffee shop. An over-loud father and a harassed-looking mother and a clutch of grubby-fingered children clawing at the patisserie case and demanding attention while their dad makes a long and complicated order with specifics about temperature and additional syrups. These children do not require additional sugar, Patrick thinks, eyeing them with the horror of someone who has never,  _ ever _ wanted to add to the Stump genetic line. A cream jug crashes to the ground. Biggest child punches mid-sized child and, for some reason,  _ smallest _ child wails. 

Patrick waits patiently and doesn’t sigh or roll his eyes even once. 

“You look like crap,” Andy greets him, when they’ve gone. This is how social niceties are rewarded. 

Andy doesn’t ask what he wants, just grabs a twenty-four ounce cup and moves to the drip machine.

“Thank you,” Patrick says sarcastically, to Andy’s back.

“Welcome,” Andy calls over his shoulder with immense cheer.

Patrick must be insane because he muses out loud as Andy hands him his coffee. “Hey, do you think there’s a constitutional difference between the way Hollywood portrays love and the way that we, as individuals, actually experience and / or perceive it?”

“That’s very deep for a Saturday,” Andy says. 

“Uh,” Patrick mutters. “That was weird. Pretend I didn’t say that.”

Andy watches him gather up his coffee and his change. At least, Andy probably does those things. It’s impossible to tell because Andy is still wearing sunglasses, indoors, in winter. Patrick doesn’t want to be judged by someone cool enough to pull that off. 

“I think it’s wrong to blame Hollywood exclusively,” Andy says eventually. “I mean, Hollywood takes cues from all kinds of media. You might as well blame Austen. Or Shakespeare. Or Sappho.” 

Patrick thinks about that as he takes a mouthful of his coffee and Andy serves the next customer. 

“I can blame  _ Sappho _ for my heartbreak?” Patrick asks, because that seems absurd. But, also, oddly comforting. As if shattering his own heart against the wall was, has been, will continue to be inevitable, foretold in the stars. 

Andy makes an exasperated sound and adds steamed milk to a cardboard cup. “That’s not what I meant. It’s, like, the opposite of what I meant — I meant no one’s responsible for your heart but you.”

Patrick hates Andy a bit. “Well, I don’t give my heart permission to feel like this. But it does, and I can’t stop it. So, fuck love, and fuck hearts, and fuck  _ him _ for breaking mine. And, like, fuck Sappho, maybe. I don’t know, I’m still not sure what your point was with that one.”

Andy lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Everything breaks eventually,” he says. “Coffee machines and record players and state-sanctioned capitalism. Hearts aren’t exempt.”

“Well, they should be,” Patrick sniffs, sipping his coffee and feeling miserable.

It’s cold outside and Patrick doesn’t want to leave the warm fugue of the shop. Apparently, everyone else in New York feels the same so there are no tables and Patrick hovers awkwardly by the sugar dispensers, dodging to the side every time someone pauses to add cream. He shoves his free hand down into his coat pocket and plays with his house keys and feels very sorry for himself. It’s not that he imagined falling in love would be easy; if it was, he’d have done it by now. He’s an overachiever in every aspect of his life and, if love were as straightforward as postgraduate essays on business analysis, Patrick should, by rights, be married by now, commuting to his job from a sprawling Cape Cod slice of Connecticut real estate in a four-wheel drive Audi. So: Love is Not Easy. But he’s pretty sure it’s not supposed to be actively  _ difficult, _ either.

Of course, what Patrick’s actually doing is making a nuisance of himself and clogging up Andy’s coffee shop. He knows this because, on his second cup, Andy starts ordering him to move to the side until Patrick’s crammed up between the wall and the bathroom door and he’s still kind of in the way but he’s not ready to go home where everything is silent, or back to the office where no one likes him, thanks very much, even though Andy looks like he doesn’t like him very much, either. He orders a third cup, but downsizes to a sixteen ounce cup. This a grudge match between his loneliness and his bladder.

When the line drops, Andy pushes his sunglasses up his nose and leans against the counter.

“Dude. I like you, but your miserable face is really harshing everyone’s buzz.”

“Sorry,” Patrick sighs morosely. He holds out his empty coffee cup. “Another?”

“That’s your third,” Andy points out. “I’m now legally obliged to cut you off.”

“Is that true?” Patrick asks, squinting at the cup. 

“No, it’s not true, idiot. It’s coffee, not heroin.” Andy sighs. “Look. Have you considered calling him — whoever he is — and saying sorry?”

“How do you know it’s  _ my  _ fault?” Patrick says, like an idiot. 

Andy looks at him and smiles. “Patrick,” he says, exasperated and fond. 

“Okay, fine,” Patrick huffs into his scarf, glaring at Andy with ill-intent.

Andy, annoyingly, looks unconcerned. He jerks his chin toward the door.

“Get,” he says.

Patrick gets.

Unable to face walking back to the Upper West Side, Patrick summons an Uber. He sits in the back of a 2014 Prius and looks at nothing in particular. He dreads opening his apartment door and smelling stale air. He doesn’t want to see an empty couch, an empty bed, to feel that emptiness reflected in himself. Something vibrates against his hip bone and he’s so numb, so tired, that it takes him a second or two to register that it’s his phone and not his own shivering hands.

“Stump,” he says, stuck in work mode from the — and he cannot stress this enough —  _ one-hundred-and-eighteen fucking hours _ he has spent in his office building.

Then Pete’s gorgeous voice says, “Um, hi,” soft and hesitant and like he wasn’t expecting Patrick to answer. “It’s me. It’s – it’s Pete.”

Patrick is so startled he almost throws his phone under the driver’s seat. 

“Pete,” he says stupidly. “What are you – Why are you calling me?” It comes out harder than he intends it to, like he doesn’t  _ want _ Pete to call him.  _ I take it back, _ he wants to squeak,  _ please never stop calling me. _

Pete’s laugh is self-deprecating, his voice slippery with nerves as he says, “Well. It’s Saturday, right?”

Patrick has spent the past seven days and sleepless nights imagining all the clever things he might say to Pete. He’s planned apologies and said sorry a hundred times or more — possibly one for every hour he’s spent at work. When he hears Pete’s voice, though, all he feels is angry. At himself, definitely. At Pete, probably. At T.A.I. Holdings and his life and his job and his stupid, expensive education that his dad tells him he ought to be  _ grateful _ for. 

Patrick is not inclined toward gratitude. 

He’s  _ sad. _ So, naturally, he takes it out on Pete. 

“I’ve missed you,” Patrick says, starting well. “Fuck, I’ve missed you so much, and that’s insane, right? That’s insane, because we don’t see each other during the week, do we? We don’t see each other, and you don’t call me, and it’s just. It’s a Saturday Sex Thing, isn’t it?”

Pete flinches audibly, his inhale sharp and staticky. Still, he doesn’t hang up. “In my defence, I have to remind you that  _ you _ were the one who said you didn’t want to date. ‘I don’t date.’ Your words, Wall Street. Not mine.”

“Well, maybe what I wanted was for you to  _ want _ to date me,” Patrick says, not unlike a five-year-old. “Maybe if you’d tried a little harder, or cared a little more, or just agreed to go to my stupid cousin’s stupid wedding,  _ like a normal person, _ I’d feel a little less like a fleshlight.”

“That’s ridiculously unfair. You can’t jump from no-strings sex to family weddings without at least a casual conversation about commitment. It’s like you expected us to be on the same page and we weren’t even reading the same  _ book.” _

“Oh, so it’s  _ my _ fault for inviting you?”

“Wall Street—”

“No! No, you don’t get to call me  _ Wall Street _ and pretend this is a fucking Ryan Gosling movie. I’m not your Emma Stone and we don’t have a musical theatre soundtrack and you — fuck. Just, fuck you.”

Patrick bites his lip and stares out of the window. 

Pete is quiet for long enough that Patrick starts to think he’s hung up. Honestly, he wouldn’t blame Pete if he had. Patrick’s not a fan of his own company either. Unfortunately, he’s stuck with himself, stuck with the nasty little voice in the back of his head that plays on every insecurity he has. God knows, it’s a  _ lot _ . 

“I think we’ve watched very different romantic comedies,” Pete says, his voice terrifyingly even. 

“Do you watch them with your wife?” Patrick asks viciously, and hates himself for feeling vicious, for caring at all, for hurting Pete, for hurting himself. Patrick has many reasons to hate himself, but he keeps adding more to the list. He will  _ drown _ himself in self-hatred, just see if he doesn’t. 

Pete’s only response is a pained huff.

“It occurs to me,” Patrick continues, “that I don’t know  _ anything  _ about you. I know your name. I know you have a tattoo studio. These are googleable facts. I know what you like in bed, based purely on the metrics of our so-called ‘relationship.’ But that’s not much, is it? I  _ don’t  _ know, for example, your parents’ names, or if you have siblings. I don’t know your favourite restaurant, your most embarrassing high school memory, if you like fall more than spring — which you should, by the way — or if you see me on Saturdays because you pretend  _ you’re _ working, or because your  _ wife _ is working. I know  _ nothing  _ about you, and that’s either sad or desperate or both.” Patrick sighs heavily. “I think it’s both.”

The silence stretches between them, deep and dark as the ocean and filled with just as many toothy, spiny things below the surface. Patrick promises himself one thing: he will  _ not _ speak first. He digs his nails into his palm and bites the inside of his cheek until it stings. 

“My wife left me five years ago,” Pete says eventually. His voice is flat and calm. It’s the last thing Patrick expects to hear and he makes a short, inelegant sound. “I had a nervous breakdown at work and ended up in the hospital for a while. I was a lawyer, um, corporate — for a Fortune 500 — and so was she. Is. She still is. Anyway. She realised she lacked the emotional bandwidth to deal with my stress and her own, so we decided to separate. We called it a trial separation, which is appropriate, for two lawyers.”

Pete laughs without conviction. Patrick winces so hard he thinks he might be suffering from temporary rigor mortis of the face. He hums a few syllables that don’t translate into words. 

When Pete continues, his voice is robotic and well-rehearsed, like he’s said this many times, to many people, dissociated from it completely, like a script. “I couldn’t go back after the breakdown, so I took my last bonus and looked into retraining as a tattoo artist. She said I lacked ambition, so we agreed to divorce.” Pete takes a deep breath and Patrick can picture him raking a hand through his hair, scratching at the back of his neck. “I am  _ not  _ married — practically, theoretically, or technically.”

Pete was corporate.  _ Of course _ Pete was corporate, it makes so much sense now it’s out there. All those pointed comments, every concerned look, every time he’s gently inferred there’s something beyond this low-level existence. Patrick feels stupid and bewildered and sad. “Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry. That’s — That’s awful.”

Pete laughs self-deprecatingly. “Yeah, well. I wasn’t exactly fun to be around. I can’t say I blame her, it’s. It’s kind of a big deal, you know? Being with someone through that.”

“Really, though. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. As for the other stuff, my mom’s name is Dale and my dad is technically Peter, but I think of him mostly as Disappointed. I have a brother and a sister, both younger than me. My favourite restaurant is Pequod’s in Chicago, and if you think deep dish is basic you can hang up right now. I once laughed so hard in chem that I farted in front of the most popular girl in school. I think the spring is hugely overrated, but summer kicks fall’s ass.”

Patrick, Social Dimwit and Personal Disaster, says. “I’ve never been to Pequod’s.”

“Tourist,” Pete says. “I’ll take you. When we’re at your stupid cousin’s stupid fucking wedding, maybe.” 

“You’ve never told me any of that before.”

“You never asked,” Pete says.

“Was I supposed to ask when you told me not to call you? Or while you were balls-deep in my—” The taxi driver launches into a coughing fit worthy of advanced-stage lupus. Patrick catches himself, pushes the pad of his thumb so far into his eye socket he risks performing an impromptu lobotomy. “Where are you, exactly?”

“Your apartment,” Pete says. “Well, technically I’m  _ near _ your apartment. I’m on the other side of the street. Your concierge said you weren’t home and, like, loitering is strictly verboten, so…”

The cab is already crawling through central park, the reservoir on their right. Patrick is minutes from his apartment building and, by extension, Pete. His routes of escape are limited to a last-minute redirect to JFK airport followed by an international flight and a life of anonymity and basket-weaving, or throwing himself bodily from a moving vehicle. Love isn’t easy. It is singularly terrifying on a molecular level. Patrick is as terrified of facing Pete as he is of losing him. 

“Jesus, Pete,” he says inelegantly. 

“I brought dinner and everything,” Pete says. Patrick’s heart falls into a tailspin. “Well, I brought ingredients for dinner. You look like a guy who never gets a home-cooked meal.”

No one has cooked dinner for Patrick since his last visit back to Boston, an awkward affair in his dad’s sprawling suburban residence. The main topic of conversation was Patrick and his continued failure to earn as much money as his dad did thirty years ago, so it wasn’t, exactly, domestic bliss and familial harmony. There’s no way he can survive Pete in his kitchen, wearing sweatpants and looking soft and warm and comfortable. He makes a ragged honk of goosey distress.

“We can watch a movie, maybe,” Pete offers.

“Um,” Patrick says, his building hoving into view. Pete’s standing on the sidewalk, a paper bag of groceries propped against his hip. He’s dressed in ripped jeans and awful sneakers and an expensive coat in soft grey wool that clashes with everything else he’s wearing. He sees Patrick through the Prius window and raises his hand in an uncertain little half-wave. 

“Hi,” he says. 

Patrick clears his throat, licks his dry lips and rasps into his phone, “Hello.”

“You can get out of the car,” Pete tells him, his smile tired. “I don’t bite, promise.”

Patrick’s life is measured in numbers. Hours clocked and trade deals closed and investments increased. Numbers are straightforward. Numbers behave in a logical fashion and there’s a lot to be said for the linear progression of currency. Patrick is terrified of things he can’t control. Patrick looks at Pete beyond the glass and thinks that, maybe, enduring fear might be worth it. He opens the cab door. He steps out onto the sidewalk. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said what I did last week. I shouldn’t have made assumptions and I shouldn’t have made you think you’re nothing more than a dick to plug up the emptiness inside of me. That was wrong.  _ I _ was wrong, so—”

“Patrick,” Pete says. “Please hang up the phone. You look fucking  _ insane.” _

“Oh,” Patrick says, shoving his phone down into his pocket.

Pete cups Patrick’s cheek in his rough, warm hand and eases the tension with a kiss. 

Pete cooks. Messily; noisily; not just the crashing of every pan in the kitchen but the wailing of Axl Rose on his iPhone, the sound of his God-awful singing. Pete cooks in his Clandestine t-shirt and his ripped jeans and Patrick slinks away to sluice off the smell of the office with hot water and bergamot body wash. Patrick stands under the spray and feels tired down to his bones. 

Wrapped in a towel, he confronts the physical manifestation of his working week in the mirror. The dark circles, sallow complexion hungry for fresh air and food with nutritional content beyond sesame oil, the haunted expression. Patrick looks like shit and feels it too. Totally worth it — a palatial apartment, five-thousand dollar suits, a bonus check that could buy Pete’s apartment five times over. A fair exchange for his soul, no doubt. 

(He thinks this ironically, jealously, aching for the same blame-free escape route as Pete. Some catastrophic Health Event that ends his career so he doesn’t have to. Is that unforgivable? He thinks it might be.) 

He dresses for comfort in soft grey sweatpants and a faded Bears sweatshirt Pete left behind weeks ago. Everything is too big for him but the world feels too big for him right now. He needs somewhere to hide. He pulls the sleeves down over his hands and follows his nose to the kitchen.

“Hey, you. Hungry?” Pete greets him, looking exactly as domestic as Patrick feared he might. 

There’s a smudge of something powdery on his cheek. He’s tucked a dish cloth into the waist of his jeans in lieu of a proper apron. His socks are bright with neon skulls. Pete is a comfort blanket of a person, Patrick wants to wrap himself up and never, ever attempt escape.

Patrick clears his throat and nods to Pete’s feet. “Warhol socks? You know that guy was kind of a dick, right?”

“And you with Salinger in your bookshelf,” Pete says, rolling his eyes. 

“Um, excuse me. Catcher in the Rye is a  _ seminal _ work.”

“Says who? Aside from angry white guys with a loaded God complex?”

“Cock it and pull it,” Patrick parries, miming firing a crossbow. “Also, you looked through my bookshelf? That’s a gross invasion of my privacy, you should be ashamed. I’d feel less violated if you looked through my sex toys.”

Pete brightens visibly. “Why am I only finding out  _ now _ that you have sex toys? Can  _ I _ play?”

Patrick imagines Pete coming inside of him then plugging him up and sending him out to the office. He feels so weak at the knees he has to grab the edge of the kitchen counter. Determined to behave like a normal human being for one whole evening, he tucks that into his back pocket and concentrates on the conversation.

“Ah-ah-ah.” Patrick wags a finger and hops up onto the counter. “We’re talking literature. Say what you want, J.D. wrote something that resonated with a lot of people. Innocence, immortality, sexual identity.” Patrick ticks them off on his fingers. “Like it or not, it covered a lot of important themes.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry. Someone appears to have kidnapped the stockbroker and replaced him with a middle class high school English teacher.”

“Still not a stockbroker. I’m a  _ hedge fund manager. _ And now I know you know the difference between the two, Mr Corporate Law. Hey, speaking of that,” Patrick pauses until Pete looks up, “Which school did you go to?”

Pete laughs. “Oh,  _ fuck _ you. I knew you’d ask.”

“It’s a reasonable question,” Patrick says. 

“What difference does it make?”

“I don’t know. I’m just curious. Am I not allowed to know anything about you?”

There’s a rule here: Patrick asks Pete, and Pete tells him, then Pete asks Patrick and Patrick will say, ‘Oh, I went to Harvard,’ casual as anything. Instead, Pete shakes his head and says, “Yale.”

He says it very firmly, a neat little package of a word, all wrapped up in paper and string. 

“That’s a good school,” Patrick says, and blinks at Pete expectantly. 

“I know,” Pete says, and doesn’t add anything at all. Patrick leans back against the counter and scowls. “Is something wrong?” Pete asks, without looking up from whatever it is he’s slicing.

Patrick sulks. “No,” he says petulantly. “So, like, how do you go from Yale and Fortune 500s to tattooing?”

“The same way anyone does it. I created a portfolio, trained with an experienced artist, then used the little bit of capital I had left to open the shop.”

“Huh.”

Patrick looks at Pete. Pete looks back. “What?”

“You had to  _ train _ to be a tattoo artist? What the fuck with? Colouring books?” 

Pete rolls his eyes. “Oh. My God. You are  _ such _ a fucking  _ snob! _ Yes, I had to train! I’m scarring someone’s actual fucking  _ skin.” _

“Oh.” Patrick reaches out to check the contents of a pan and takes an entirely undeserved spoon to the knuckles. “Ow! Motherfu—”

“Don’t peek,” Pete tells him sternly. “This is my — what do you call it? My signature dish. Go. Find something on TV — I work alone.”

Patrick curls in the corner of his expensive couch with a glass of wine, his feet tucked under himself as Pete continues to crash through the kitchen like a small and tattooed hurricane. Patrick stares at the screen of his ridiculously proportioned television and tries to imagine Pete in an office, sharky and sharp with quarter-inch cuffs and a two-thousand dollar suit. In a boardroom, arguing contentious points of contract law, professional and aggressive. Pete in  _ court.  _ He peeps over the back of the couch and watches Pete burn himself draining noodles with a small and sexy yelp and can’t imagine it at all. 

“Ta da,” Pete says, two minutes later, offering a bowl that smells of cheese, carbohydrates and  _ perfection. _

Patrick takes the bowl and fork and looks down. Then he looks up. 

He says, “Did you cook macaroni cheese?”

“It’s  _ Kraft _ mac and cheese,” Pete says proudly. He adds, “With  _ hot dogs,”  _ and points to them with a flourish. Like all of life’s problems are solvable with processed meat. 

Patrick’s heart swells. His eyes prickle and he thinks he might cry. He buys himself time by taking a mouth-scalding shovel of processed  _ heaven _ onto his fork and cramming it between his teeth. It tastes of being four years old and small and safe. When did he last eat something that didn’t fall out of a vending machine or come in a paper bag with a plastic fork? Come to think of it, when did he last eat  _ at all? _ When he trusts himself, he looks up and meets Pete’s dark-lashed gaze. 

“This is good,” he says, sliding his feet into Pete’s lap. Pete wraps his hand around Patrick’s ankle and rubs the knobby bone there with the pad of his thumb. “Thank you.”

“I melt three slices of cheese into the sauce,” Pete whispers, like he’s sharing a trade secret. “Eat up, you look like you could use it.”

Patrick eats a second helping, another glass of wine, and a butterscotch pudding cup. He eats until his stomach feels full and tight as a drum. Until his mouth is salty with processed cheese and his lips feel permanently slippery with grease. He’s missed food, he thinks. He’s missed food eaten for the sake of its deliciousness. Not just fine dining — although he loves lobster, caviar, vintage champagne — but food like this. Food with fat and taste and empty calories. Food that sits heavy as lead in his stomach and makes him drowsy and glacier-slow. 

He tips his head onto Pete’s shoulder, closes his eyes and murmurs, “No one’s cooked for me in two years,” into Pete’s collar bone, Pete’s ink. 

Pete rubs a hand across Patrick’s thigh, kisses him on the top of his head, where his hair’s as fluffy as goose down from drying naturally. Patrick curls a fist into Pete’s shirt, brushes his nose against Pete’s stubble and thinks safe, teddy bear thoughts. For the first time, they don’t end the night with the inevitable exclamation point of sex. Instead, they curl together in Patrick’s huge bed like a matched pair of question marks. 

Still, there’s more than one way to end a sentence. More than one kind of punctuation, and why not a question mark? It feels like moving forward, like there are good, soft answers in the world and Patrick’s found one of them. He doesn’t say he’s fallen in love. Gently this time. Less like falling from the stars, falling from grace, teeth gritted and eyes closed smelling burning flesh from atmospheric re-entry, more like floating. That’s how it feels. Defying gravity. Why does nobody call it  _ floating  _ in love? 

Anyway, he doesn’t  _ say _ he’s fallen in love, but he feels it. In his chest, in the full, round warmth of his belly, in Pete’s heartbeat echoing in his ear. He kisses the underside of Pete’s jaw. He feels happy.  _ I love you, _ he thinks, sleepily.  _ I could love you forever, if you’d let me. _

He doesn’t say it out loud, so Pete doesn’t hear him. He decides that’s probably for the best. He sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is everyone doing okay? Everything feels kind of weird this week, like lockdown is a total disconnect from reality. Now there's talk of heading back to "normal" and the idea of it is completely terrifying. I've acclimatised to this, now! Don't make me shift to something else!
> 
> Thank you guys, for continuing to read along with these terrible communicators. Reading your comments or hearing from you on Tumblr is, like, basically the best part of my week. I hope you're all staying safe and doing well and, as always, if anyone needs to vent or talk or, like, whatever you like, you can find me on Tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers
> 
> Have a great week!


	12. Chapter 12

Patrick wakes on Sunday morning feeling happy in the fairy tale way. Not fairy tales that end in blood and pain and children snatched from their beds in the night never to be seen again. The good kind, the ones with gentle edges and pink petals and cosy happy endings, as warm as blankets. Patrick wakes feeling soft all the way down to his sweet caramel filling. Soft as ice cream in all the places except the hard part, the part of him straining up, stiff and blood-pink and wet at the tip as Pete scrapes his teeth over Patrick’s hip. Patrick blinks at the ceiling and tests his wrists against Pete’s hold. Soft, too, he decides, wriggling his toes against the comforter. 

“Good morning,” Pete says, smiling from the vicinity of Patrick’s thighs. “I didn’t know if I should wake you, but, like, parts of you were already up, so…”

“This is good,” Patrick says, arching his hips and brushing the sticky head of his cock against Pete’s mouth. 

Carefully, Pete lifts one of Patrick’s hands from the mattress. Their fingers lace; dark against pale, knotted like rope or tree roots or veins. Pete guides Patrick’s hand to the back of his head, tangles Patrick’s fingers in the scruffy hair of his nape, where it’s ruffled and sweaty and prone to curling. This is… weird. Good weird. Falling off the highest diving board and feeling the sick and dizzy swoop of gravity in the pit of your stomach but knowing it won’t hurt when you land kind of weird. Patrick likes it, tests his fingers against the coarse scruff of hair in his fist and pulls Pete’s mouth to his cock. 

Pete sighs, eyes closed, pulls back against Patrick’s hold and says, “You can pull. If you want to, you know. I’m kind of into it.”

Patrick blinks, confused. This is not part of their protocol. He feels nervous, his nails scraping gently against Pete’s scalp. “I don’t get it,” he admits. Pete shrugs and smiles and nuzzles down into the close-cropped scratch of Patrick’s pubic hair for a second. 

“Sometimes, _I_ don’t want to think,” Pete whispers. The groan that leaves Patrick’s throat is choral, echoing through his chest and into his ears as he closes his eyes and tries not to come. He takes a grippy handful of Pete’s hair and pulls. 

It’s too hot in his sweatshirt. Sweat films under Patrick’s arms, the small of his back, behind his knees but he doesn’t want to move away so he can take it off. He melts slowly, his boxers sticking halfway down his damp thighs and Pete’s mouth hovering over his dick. The press of his fingers to the back of Pete’s skull feels experimental, teenage. Patrick raises his hips and pushes Pete down and feels Pete’s mouth sink over him, hot and slick and _heaven on earth._

Pete sucks him off slowly, never dropping eye contact. He moves his mouth with gratifying need, his cheeks hollowed, his hands big and rough on Patrick’s hips. There’s a look on his face that says, with absolute sincerity, that there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. Patrick gives himself over to this: to Pete’s mouth and Pete’s throat and Pete’s tongue wrapped around him. He hands over to the crawling part of his lizard brain that thinks of sex and forgetting and lets his thoughts turn grainy, hissing like TV static. He fucks Pete’s mouth with slow, indulgent rocks of his hips and lets himself drift.

Pete stuffs a hand between his own legs, pushes up on his knees to fist his cock while he sucks Patrick off. Patrick digs his fingernails into the back of Pete’s neck, grabs onto the bedsheets with the other hand like they’re the sole source of gravitational force in the bedroom, and hangs on. He wants to fill Pete’s mouth with his taste and kiss it out of him. He wants Pete to stripe him with come like a post modern art piece. He gasps that out loud, “Fuck, just come all over me. Mark me up, I need it, _please,”_ and Pete groans around him, sloppy and desperate and Patrick tips over, locks up, sees fucking stars as he comes into Pete’s throat. Pete sucks him to the last drop then moves up over Patrick’s prone and trembling form. He shoves up Patrick’s sweatshirt and touches himself as Patrick watches, ears ringing, dick a softening pink throb, until Pete comes with a grunt, ribboning Patrick’s stomach. 

“Fuck,” Patrick murmurs, rubbing his fingers through the slushy mess jeweled in the coppery peninsula of hair that stretches between his navel and his cock. He feels owned, or maybe co-opted, safe and secure and like maybe he could go again, given ten minutes to recover. 

“Taste it,” Pete whispers, which is the sexiest thing Patrick’s ever heard. His dick twitches; he rounds down how long it might take him to get hard again. He curls his tongue around his fingertips and licks away the bittersalt of Pete’s taste. Pete kisses him softly and any lingering tension leaks from Patrick like he’s bleeding out. 

They stretch out lazily, kissing, touching. Patrick wriggles away only long enough to shrug off the sweatshirt and then Pete pulls him back. He traces indolent swirls on Patrick’s sticky, sweaty skin. For the first time in living memory, Patrick thinks he might feel entirely content. 

“I really like you,” Pete says, echoing Patrick’s thoughts. “Is that a mutual thing? It feels mutual but, like, I’ve misjudged before.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “I really like you, too. All mutual.”

Pete smiles and Patrick could leave it at that. They could continue to have a nice morning and everyone could go about their day without hideous social awkwardness and uncomfortable historical questioning. But, as evidenced by twenty-nine years of poor decision-making, Patrick decides to detonate a small atomic bomb in the middle of their cosy Sunday morning cuddle session.

“How long were you with your wife?” 

Pete startles and makes a soft, choking sound. When he recovers, he says, “Now? You’re asking that question now? I mean, I can still taste your dick, but sure, let’s talk about my ex.”

“I’m,” Patrick pauses and thinks then continues, “I’m curious, I guess. Indulge me?”

Pete gives him a long, serious look. “I’ve never done anything _but_ indulge you. I’m now professionally graded in the sphere of indulging you constantly.”

“So, there’s no real harm in carrying on, is there?” Patrick offers Pete his best smile, the one that shows all his teeth and makes his eyes crinkle at the corners. The smile he uses when he’s reassuring clients that _No, everything in this portfolio is absolutely in order and there’s no way I just gambled away a solid 10% of your liquefiable assets._ That smile. Pete sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“You know this is none of your business, right?” Pete says. 

Patrick shrugs and feigns disinterest and decides he’ll check the marriage records when he’s alone. “God, it’s just a question. Fine, don’t answer it, I don’t actually—”

“Two years,” Pete says. 

Patrick blinks. “Oh.” Then he thinks, which is stupid, and instead of accepting Pete’s response with grace, he continues asking stupid questions. “Married for two, or together for two?” 

Pete makes an exasperated cat noise in his nose. “Jesus fuck. Together — does it make any difference?”

“That’s quick. That’s a quick meet, marry, divorce story,” Patrick says, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

“I’m not an easy guy to live with,” Pete says. 

Patrick stares at Pete, astonished. “That’s _not_ true. Did she tell you that? She was _wrong._ You’re, like, the easiest guy to be around in the history of everything.”

“She didn’t have to tell me that,” Pete taps his temple lightly, as if that’s an explanation, _“I_ have to live with me constantly, and I know I’d move out in a fucking heartbeat.”

“Do you still love her?” Patrick asks, holding his breath as he waits for the answer.

“What the fuck kind of question is _that?_ Can we talk about something else? Please?”

Pete looks annoyed. He sounds annoyed. Patrick is clearly annoying him. Caught at a conversational crossroads, he picks the road most travelled and shrugs, like he doesn’t care either way. He does, though. He cares because Pete met someone and married them within two years and that’s definitely a sign of love, or fate, or _something._ Patrick’s known Pete for, like, one-eighth of that time and can’t even pin him down for a mid-week date. 

“Fine, whatever, you don’t have to be a bitch about it. Do you want to stay for the rest of the day?” Patrick asks, plucking at the comforter between his fingers. “We could go for brunch. Or, like, _not_ if that’s the most horrifically bougie thing you’ve ever heard in your life.”

“I’d love to do that,” Pete says. Patrick eyes him doubtfully. “Seriously, that sounds great.”

Patrick hears the _but_ and feels his stomach fill with live eels. He says it anyway. “Buuut?”

“I’d _love_ to take you for brunch at a hipster cafe and order mimosas and eat avocado toast,” Pete says. “That’s a thing I’d love to do.”

Patrick sits up and reaches for his glasses. This is not, for the record, the way he saw his happy Sunday morning sex ending. _“But?”_

“But,” Pete says. “But I have to open the shop and, like, do the customer service thing. You know?”

Pete slips out from under Patrick and begins the weekly task of searching for the exact location of his underwear on Patrick’s bedroom floor. Patrick props himself up a little on his elbows and watches Pete dress. “I could meet you for lunch,” he offers. “We could find a restaurant near the shop. Hell, I’ll bring you a Big Mac, if that’s what you want.”

Pete tugs his shorts over his hips and looks amused. “Babe, I don’t have time to break for lunch, I’m just gonna grab a sandwich while I work. Like, work on the accounts. Probably not while I tattoo anyone, they get weird if I eat while I do that. It’s a nice idea, though. Thanks.”

“You know, for someone who tells me I work too hard, you’re, like, not setting the best example.”

“I can’t help that I work weekends.”

“You know that I don’t. Would it kill you to take Sunday off now and again so that we could actually spend time together?”

“We spend lots of time together. It’s only been a few months, right? Give it time.”

“I’m getting mixed signals, that’s all. You said you wanted to date—”

“Uh, your honour, the witness is unreliable.”

“— Okay, fine, you _implied_ you wanted to date—”

“Better. I’ll allow it.”

“— And now I’m telling you I’m kind of into the idea, you’re acting like _I’m_ unreasonable for wanting more than twelve hours of your week.”

Patrick squirms back into his boxers and waits for Pete to reply. He can wait all day. This is a battle Pete will not win. Pete gives him a soft-eyed, indulgent look and cinches his belt buckle. “We’ll figure something out, okay.”

“Right. Yeah, no. Sure we will. We’re very good at communicating.”

“Wall Street…”

Patrick sits perfectly still in the centre of his bed and concentrates very hard on the weave of his comforter. Like if he can focus his thoughts on one tiny spot, this won’t escalate into another fight. Pete sighs and sits next to him and kisses him, soft and sweet and open-mouthed. 

“I promise I’ll work something out,” he says. He pauses for a beat. “I do _really_ like you, Wall Street. You just have to trust me on that.”

Patrick gathers up the dark thoughts and compresses them down, crushes them in his chest until he’s turned the coal to diamond. He feels it again, the same as last night, that absolute certainty that he’s in love with Pete. He knows it like he knows his eyes are blue, like he knows his zip code, like he knows Pi is infinite without really comprehending what _infinity_ means. Love means hope and trust. Love is handing over your heart and hoping they’ll keep it close and not bruise it to a pulped red stain on the bedroom floor. 

He swallows down whatever it is he wants to say. He touches the back of Pete’s hand on the comforter. 

“It’s okay,” Patrick says, and he even sounds like he means it. “Have a great day at work.”

Tuesday evening, 6:15.

Patrick decides if he spends another minute looking at the Trinity account he’s going to throw his laptop out of the window. Or possibly himself, which is worse. It’s basically lunchtime by his internal workday clock, but he gathers up his coat and his phone. Dinner sounds good. Dinner with _Pete_ sounds better. This whole positive relationship thing needs trying on for size, like a new suit. He leaves his laptop on the desk in an act of deliberate defiance and takes his phone only to order Chinese takeout from the restaurant half a block from the office. 

A master of romantic subterfuge, Patrick has a plan. A perfectly planned plan. A plan that requires the most straightforward execution. A plan that cannot possibly go wrong. One day, college students will study the greatness of this plan. If Mohammed won’t go to the mountain then, Patrick reasons, the mountain must go to Mohammed. Or, in this case, the date must go to Pete. A surprise dinner — who doesn’t enjoy unexpected Chinese food and bonus mid-week orgasms? Patrick rides the elevator down to the ground floor and steps out into the slushy mid-winter cold. 

He texts Pete, filled with bonhomie. 

_Good day at the office?_

_awful!_

_so tired i could die_

_miss you :(_

This bodes well in the face of Patrick’s fiendish and dastardly plan to feed Pete and fuck Pete and spend quality time with Pete on Pete’s sofa. A sofa Patrick’s never seen and that’s — that’s sort of weird, isn’t it? Tonight, he’s going to rectify that. Tonight, they’re going to act like a regular couple. 

_Aw, that sucks. Get into your jammies and call me later?_ Patrick texts, feeling devious and thrilled and _happy._ He presses the button on the crosswalk and then walks directly into oncoming traffic like a true New Yorker.

Forty minutes later, Patrick alights from a car outside Pete’s apartment building, his arms crowded with foil cartons of rice and sesame oil and MSG and _deliciousness._ Patrick’s mouth waters heavily. There are no calories in surprise dinners, and that’s just a fact.

Patrick makes his way through Pete’s broken security door, past the places Pete kissed him up against the wall as they tripped up the stairs. Every square inch of exposed skin heats at the memory. Certain square inches of unexposed skin perk, drawn toward Pete like opposing polarities. He reaches Pete’s door, knocks, and waits. He holds the warm bag of takeout in one hand, a cold bottle of wine in the other, and waits with the anticipation of a man doing a nice thing. Pete is tired, so Patrick will feed him and suck Pete’s dick and cuddle in Pete’s messy bed. Pete will be thrilled and charmed in equal measure and will realise that Patrick is someone worth loving. This is his design.

Patrick waits. He taps one foot against the floor. He shifts his weight from hip to hip and thinks about knocking again but there’s a scuffle behind the door, so he waits. The chain grates back and the lock turns. The door opens a crack.

A single, golden eye peers out of the gloom. It’s relative positioning is considerably lower than it ought to be. Patrick blinks. He wonders if Pete has fallen over on his way to the door. 

“Oh,” he says. “Hi.”

The door opens a little more and reveals a small and lovely face with familiar eyes, thick, dark lashes, and a wide and frowning mouth. Patrick isn’t great at assessing the vintage of tiny humans, but, if pushed, he’d put this one somewhere between 4 and 8 years old, based purely on his limited experience of his nieces and nephews and the ever-changing roster of photographs on Joe’s desk. Probably old enough to use the bathroom independently. Definitely not old enough to stay at home without supervision.

“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” the child informs him, showcasing an uneven set of baby and half-grown adult teeth and a hearty lisp. 

“Well _maybe_ you shouldn’t answer the door,” Patrick says.

The child looks unamused. They look unamused in _exactly the same way_ Pete looks unamused. There is a tiny human in Pete’s apartment and the tiny human looks just like Pete. An uncomfortable game of Clue plays out across Patrick’s frontal lobe and reaches a logical conclusion. It hits him like a brick to the chest. 

A small, cold knot of dread curls through his stomach. 

“What’s your name? Like, your last name?” Patrick asks, his nails sinking into the bag of takeout. 

The kid looks at him with undisguised disdain. “What’s _yours?”_ he says hotly. He is _so_ Wentzian. It is _so_ obvious. 

But, like. Okay. There could be a logical explanation. It could be a _coincidence._ This could be the wrong apartment and sometimes children look like people for no specific or genetic reason. Or this could be a niece or nephew and Pete is working on his Uncle of the Year award. Or maybe Pete is a kind and considerate man who heard his neighbours were struggling with creating their own tiny replicant and he masturbated into a paper cup for their benefit and now he babysits when they go out for dinner. Those things are all possible.

Patrick takes a ragged breath. Is he going to throw up? Is that a thing that’s happening right now? “I think I have the wrong apartment,” he says, his mouth numb. He doesn’t move, though. “Is this the wrong apartment? Does, um. Is Uncle Pete here?”

“Daddy,” the tiny human shouts. Patrick’s heart drops through three stories of apartment building construction material and into the floor. 

A shadowy man-shape looms in the hallway. A familiar voice says, “You know you’re not supposed to answer the door, buddy. Get back inside.” 

Patrick’s heartbeat accelerates painfully, slamming into his ribs. He has never felt so close to a cardiac emergency outside of a work setting. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth like Velcro. 

The light clicks on, bathing the room in light the colour of sour milk. The threadbare carpet is littered with shoes and coats in adorable miniature size. There’s a scooter and a headless action figure and a small red bicycle propped against the wall. None of these things were apparent when Patrick staggered down this hallway with his hand down Pete’s pants. 

In the centre of this slowly-detonating explosion is Pete. They make intense, agonised eye contact across six feet of subpar Bronx rental income.

“So,” Patrick says slowly. “What the actual fuck?”

“Daddy,” the child says seriously. “That man said fu—”

“Language,” Pete snaps, with the instinct of the long-suffering parent. 

Pete’s dressed in basketball shorts, and fluffy Gryffindor socks. His shirt says _Na na na na na na BatDad,_ as if his paternalistic status wasn’t immediately fucking _obvious_. His eyes flash, a beating heart of obvious panic. A soft sound of distress bubbles from his mouth. Patrick will remember these things even when he’s old, a series of Polaroids burnt into his memory that he will examine one by one, cutting out the bad parts like rot from an apple. Right now though, Patrick drops the takeout with a thunk so he can grab at the door frame and hold himself upright. Fragrant kung pao sauce leaks from the paper bag like an exit wound and spreads toward the toes of his shiny oxfords.

The tiny person stares between the two of them. “Daddy, your friend is weird.”

“Go to your room, pumpkin,” Pete says. 

He says it so gently. 

The kid glares at Patrick. “Why? I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m only s’posed to go to my room when I do something _bad.”_

“I know that. You didn’t do anything bad, buddy. Daddy just needs to have a grown up conversation.”

“Grown ups are dumb,” the kid says, glaring at Patrick with force. It’s clear who he means when he says ‘grown ups.’

Pete nods, his face bloodless. “Yeah,” he says, his voice rough like tree bark. “They really are. But, like, you still have to go to your room, ‘kay?”

“But—”

_“Now,_ Henri.”

Pete looks like he’s having an out of body experience. Patrick watches the child — Henri, apparently, fucking _Henri —_ walk away, his pulse echoing in his ears. The kid even _walks_ like Pete. Vomiting is still very much on the table.

The door slams behind Henri who has no idea that he is a hand grenade tossed into the centre of Patrick’s life. Pete looks at Patrick with the wariness of a zoo keeper approaching a particularly assholeish mongoose. He holds his hands up, palms forward. He takes slow, measured steps along the hallway. 

“Okay. I can explain.”

“So,” Patrick spits. “Your _roommate_ seems great. Did you meet him on Craigslist or through friends?”

“Fuck,” Pete says, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m sorry. I’ve fucked up.”

“You have a kid,” Patrick says hoarsely, the words wrapping around his windpipe like a noose. It doesn’t come out like a question. It doesn’t need to — the irrefutable biological evidence is _right there._ “That is your actual flesh-and-blood _child.”_ He tastes it, tests the sour flavour of it against his tongue like a lemon ball. Pete lied. Pete lied without hesitation, and more than once. “What the _fuck,_ Pete?”

Pete takes a slow breath, in through his nose and out through his mouth. “Look, it’s just. You were the guy I met at a bar. What was I supposed to do? Introduce you to my _son?”_ He doesn’t add ‘you fucking idiot,’ but Patrick hears it loud and clear. He can’t even feel offended — he _is_ a fucking idiot, as evidenced by his repeated failure to follow the glowing neon signs to their obvious conclusion. 

_“Yes,”_ Patrick says, though. Then he thinks about it. “Or, no. Not right away. But you were supposed to _tell me he exists._ I can’t even begin to explain to you how fucked up this is.”

Pete’s face is a sallow, sickly grey. “Patrick,” he says weakly. “Don’t you get it? I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t an issue. We were never supposed to make it half this far, and then we did and I just… God. I don’t know.”

It clunks into place, a series of interconnecting steel doors in a maze Patrick has no desire to be trapped within. His logical brain races through the corridors and finds the minotaur at the centre, the crushing, hurtful force of it knocking the wind from him: Pete didn’t want Patrick to know about his son because Pete thinks Patrick is a terrible, self-absorbed workophile and, also, a possible sex pervert. By extension, Pete has no intention of ever letting Patrick into his life in a non-superficial way, because Pete’s life is tied intrinsically to his son’s. Like oil and water, the two parts can never mix. There’s no point competing with genetic material. 

Patrick feels stupid, stupid, stupid, embarrassed by his own ridiculous _emotions,_ taunted by the little voice that reminds him this is all he’ll ever get. This sex life that doesn’t overlap with real life. This void he tries to fill with dick but he’ll always be hollow on the inside. He reacts with an attack, long-held to be the best form of defence. 

“You are a _gaping asshole,”_ Patrick snarls. “You lied to me over and over again and I — I can’t even say I’m surprised. You pushed me _past fucking surprise._ Surprise is a thing I no longer experience when it comes to shit like this. So fuck you, Pete Wentz. Fuck you.”

“Yeah?” Pete snaps. “We only met because you use sex to self-medicate for all the many, _many_ problems in your life, because you’re too much of a coward to confront the way you _feel_ about things. You work and you work and you break it up by fucking strangers to make yourself feel… worthy? Noticeable? _Nothing_ about you is family-friendly.”

Patrick glares at Pete, affronted. “And _you_ fucked me! God, don’t pretend you’re better than I am, you self-aggrandising, hypocritical _bag of dicks.”_

Pete buries both hands in his hair and pulls. “What the _hell_ do you want me to say? You are literally standing on my doorstep — _screaming like an insane person —_ while my kid is in the _next room._ What — What the fuck do you want from me, Patrick?”

So, that’s that. It hits like a punch to the stomach: while Patrick was falling in love, Pete was fooling around. Knowing this does nothing to relieve the aching ball of sadness at the back of his throat.

“Nothing,” he says quietly. His eyes throb with the fierce task of holding back tears. One thing he knows with absolute certainty is that he will _not_ cry in front of Pete fucking Wentz: Tattoo Artist, Secret Father, Lying Prick.

“I’m not your medication,” Pete goes on, sliding in more knives, adding more salt. “I’m not your therapist, or your best friend, or your fucking _parent._ I’m _his_ parent.” He jerks his thumb back over his shoulder. “It’s my job to keep him safe from...”

_People like you,_ Pete doesn’t add. He drops his head and bites his lip and stares at his stupid, charming Harry Potter socks. 

Patrick blinks, the hurt in his chest so deep he thinks he might be bleeding out. “Wow,” he says softly. “Okay then. That’s good to know.”

Pete looks stricken. “Wait, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Somehow, Patrick’s knees do not buckle beneath him. Somehow, Patrick is still standing. Somehow, Patrick’s heart continues to beat, despite all evidence from his central nervous system suggesting Pete has reached into his chest and torn it out. He shakes his head and takes a step back on his cooked spaghetti legs. He scoops up the bag of leaking takeout from the floor and shoves it, along with the wine, into Pete’s arms. “I brought dinner,” he says numbly. “You might as well have it.”

“Patrick, wait. Come on, just—”

Patrick heads for the stairwell and doesn’t look back.


	13. Chapter 13

This time, Patrick leaves first. This time, Patrick walks away from Pete. This time, he tells himself it’s different because, this time,  _ he’s _ the one leaving. This time, like every time, it feels like being left behind. 

He descends the stairs at warp speed and makes turn after turn through a neighbourhood he doesn’t know. He walks with no destination in mind. It’s a metaphor for his job, his relationship with Pete, his life in general. Place one foot in front of the other and don’t worry too much about where you’re going. Less a journey, more a treadmill. Did he pass that building already? Does that bodega look familiar? His phone vibrates in his pocket, stops, vibrates again a second later and he’d switch it off except…

Except he’s a Wall Street exec, and constant access to a phone is hardwired into his programming. It’s a ventilator, a life support machine, necessary to sustain his empty corporate existence. He lets it ring.

The thing is, it’s not even  _ about  _ the kid. The kid is just the byproduct of a lengthy process of manipulation and deception. Patrick could’ve  _ dealt _ with the concept of Pete’s fatherhood, if given the opportunity to do so. If he was  _ trusted  _ enough, which he wasn’t. But none of that matters.

Because Pete lied.

Oh, Pete  _ lied. _ Time and time again, in underhand ways, in squirrely secrecy, curled around his real life like a dragon curls around its gold. He allowed Patrick to think he was unavailable. He allowed Patrick to think he was  _ married. _ This, more than anything, is why Patrick has avoided falling in love or any situation that might lead to heartbreak. Not that he imagined  _ this  _ specifically because God knows, he did not. But something like this? A dirty bomb of hurt smuggled into the centre of his life and detonated at the worst possible moment?  _ This  _ he expected. 

It turns out, knowing something like this would happen is not suitable preparation for lived experience. Patrick feels hollowed-out, broken open, a fractured rib cage without a beating heart. It’s not like he opened up to Pete, oh no. It’s not like he exposed every single tender, blood-rich vein and handed over an anatomical diagram detailing which would bleed out fastest. It’s not like he spent  _ months _ convincing himself that Pete’s affection was worth his own personal vulnerability. It’s not like he stormed his own boundaries time and time again and convinced himself it was  _ good _ for him to make himself available. To put himself out there. Good thing he didn’t do any of  _ that.  _

God — fucking  _ god. _ He feels so  _ stupid.  _ It’s so  _ distressing.  _

A police car screams past the intersection up ahead, a stark reminder that crime happens and he looks like a victim statistic in his cashmere coat and designer glasses. He stops walking and looks up and down the street and has no idea where he is. Calling an Uber seems logical but also requires basic social interaction. Patrick’s ability to function is non-functioning right now. He’s offline, out of data, experiencing technical difficulties so please call back later. Walking back to Manhattan is a totally reasonable and responsible thing to do given the circumstances.

His phone vibrates in his pocket once more.

Hands shaking, he digs it out and glares at the screen and Pete’s stupid name and Pete’s stupid selfie taken in Patrick’s stupid bed. Patrick wants to answer the call. Patrick  _ also _ wants to bury Pete in a shallow grave, so he lets it ring out instead. There are a  _ lot _ of notifications left behind, lots of missed calls and voicemails and texts. Patrick scrubs his knuckles over his face and realises he’s crying only because his hand comes away wet. Fuck this. Fuck absolutely  _ all _ of this. He takes it back: he has no desire to be vulnerable.

Pete’s name and easy smile light up the screen again. Patrick debates smashing them both against the nearest wall just to see if he can smash Pete’s teeth in with the power of negative thinking, but doesn’t because ‘banker.’ Against any and all better judgement — God, Patrick has proved he has  _ no _ better judgement — he stabs the green button and hopes his voice doesn’t tremble as he barks into the receiver, “What?” His voice does tremble. It’s  _ embarrassingly  _ obvious he’s crying. “What the  _ fuck _ do you want?”

“Patrick?” Pete says frantically. “Jesus, I was... Okay. Where  _ are _ you? Are you okay? Do you need me to—”

“Leave me alone, I’m fine,” Patrick says, which is a lie. He’s such a liar. Patrick and ‘okay’ are not even acquainted concepts at the moment. They exist on different planes of reality. 

“You’re not fine,” Pete says, astute as always, talking too quickly. “You’re not okay and that’s my fault, because I said those awful things and I didn’t — I didn’t  _ mean _ any of them. It’s my fault. But, like. Aside from the part where it’s totally  _ your _ fault for showing up at my place without warning. That part’s all on you.”

Patrick collapses onto the wet curb and buries his face in his sleeve. He takes deep, snotty breaths that fog his glasses and make his skin feel wet and slippery; a selkie of his own hurt. He searches through the storm of feeling in his chest for that flinty ball of anger but it’s pointless. All he feels is  _ sad. _

He takes a deep breath and controls his trembling vocal cords. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, his voice sharp as Japanese steel. “Is my reaction to the existence of your secret fucking child  _ inconveniencing  _ you in some way? No, you’re totally right — this is  _ all _ on me.  _ I’m _ the bad guy in this situation. Tell me more, but speak up. It’s kind of hard to hear you from all the way up on your moral fucking high ground.”

Pete doesn’t answer for a couple of seconds. “I mean, you realise  _ why _ I didn’t tell you, right?” he says, like the question is rhetorical, like the answer is obvious. Patrick allows his own furious silence to speak on his behalf. Pete goes on, “Okay, that came out wrong. God, I’m just — I’m so sorry, okay? For what I said in the apartment and for lying to you and for, like, continuing to exist. I’m a disaster. My existence is awful for most people around me, I get that, and—”

“Shut up,” Patrick snaps, mulish. A beat of tense silence. “Okay, fuck you. You don’t get to turn this into a Pete Wentz pity party.  _ I’m  _ the wronged party here. Me. You don’t get to pass my hurt feelings off as your own.”

“I’m not trying to pass anything off — I handled that badly. So badly. I just. Can you tell me where you are?”

“Like you care,” Patrick snaps, feeling childish. 

Pete takes a big, exasperated breath through his nose. “I care.  _ Clearly _ I care or I wouldn’t be chasing you,  _ in the dark, _ so you don’t get fucking  _ shot.” _

That’s not the answer Patrick’s expecting. He pulls his phone away from his ear and stares at it in confusion. “You are?” he says stupidly, to thin air. Of course, phones don’t work at that distance and he hears Pete’s frantic, scratchy voice echoing out of the ear piece, ‘Patrick, did you fucking  _ hang up  _ on me? I swear to  _ God,  _ you’re  _ such _ an asshole...’ He brings the phone back to his ear and says, “No, I’m still here. You’re looking for me? Like, outside? You’re outside, looking for me?”

“No, Patrick. I’m looking for you from  _ inside  _ my apartment,” Pete snaps, his voice so heavy with sarcasm it probably outweighs lead by the cubic foot. “Look into the sky — do you see the Pat symbol? It’s a twenty-foot tall  _ asshole, _ in case you were wondering.” Pete stops talking only so he can suck in a breath before he continues. “Sorry, it’s just. Yes, I’m outside — in  _ shorts,  _ by the way — and if  _ I _ get shot, I’m officially blaming you, because this part  _ is  _ your fault.”

Patrick takes a deep breath, touches the throbbing vein at his temple, and attempts to process…  _ that. _ “So, wait. If you’re outside, where’s…?”

“Henri,” Pete says. When he says the name, he sounds like he’s smiling. “His name is Henri, and he’s with a neighbour so I can chase my idiot boyfriend through the fucking Bronx, and I’m wearing  _ shorts,  _ Patrick. Did I mention that? Polyester shorts. It’s below freezing. I lost all sensation in my nutsack, like, three minutes ago.”

“You’re not actually interested in me,” Patrick protests, instead of thinking about Pete’s junk. “You’re just — You’re lonely, and sooner or later you’re going to meet someone who—”

Pete cuts him off. “Babe, please,” he says, so softly. “I’m so into you it kind of freaks me out if I think about it. Like space, you know? You make me feel how  _ infinity _ makes me feel; tiny and small but part of something so much bigger. Do you get that?”

Patrick thinks about the best possible way to refute that, how he might argue against something so obviously  _ wrong _ if this were a hostile takeover, when Pete’s stupid sneakers and Gryffindor socks and goosebumped, skinny knees fill up the spot of asphalt Patrick is staring at. He looks up and meets Pete’s soft whisky eyes, then looks away quickly. There’s no way he can do this. Doing this is not a possibility.

Pete slides his phone into the pocket of his black leather bomber jacket and flops onto the curb next to Patrick. “Hey,” he says lightly. “You’re not as far from my place as you think you are, by the way. It’s like, literally a block over. You must’ve been running in circles.”

“Story of my life,” Patrick says gruffly, to his shoes. He drapes an arm over Pete’s cold shins, though. Wraps his hand around Pete’s bony ankle. To share body heat, not because he  _ cares _ or anything.

“So,” Pete starts. “We need to have, like, ten solid minutes of emotional transparency, ‘kay? No dickishness allowed on behalf of either party.”

The idea of being open with anyone, for any reason, is enough to make Patrick feel queasy. Being open with Pete? About catching him  _ in flagrante parentis? _ God, no. Patrick observes this moment from the same well-insulated distance he imagines someone might observe their own catastrophic injury. He buries his face in Pete’s neck and emits a low, warbling groan. 

“Can we compromise with two minutes of transparency and I’ll spend eight blowing you behind that dumpster?” Patrick hedges into Pete’s shampoo and cheap shaving foam-scented skin.

Pete’s laugh vibrates his throat like Morse code. “Dude, it’s  _ below freezing,  _ my dick isn’t leaving my shorts unless there’s a medical emergency _. _ ”

Patrick removes his face from Pete’s rabbity pulse and looks at him askance. “A medical emergency that requires your… penis? Like, the EMT says, ‘I need 10CCs of dick,’ and you selflessly donate to the cause?”

Pete nudges Patrick with his shoulder. “Fuck you, do you know how small a CC is? My dick is  _ way _ more than 10CCs. But, yeah. Exactly like that.”

“Name  _ one _ medical emergency that might be improved by the addition of your penis. Just one. I can wait.”

“You’re avoiding my emotional transparency,” Pete says. “Stop doing that. I’m trying to be vulnerable with you right now and you’re ruining it by talking about my dick.”

“I think, if we’re being technical, you were the one who started talking about your dick,” Patrick says. 

“Evasion is not a tactic available to you right now, Wall Street. Don’t even try it. Talk to me about your feelings,” Pete says, offering Patrick a look that can only be described as ‘significant.’

Patrick  _ hates _ his feelings.

Objectively, he hates lots of things. Running late for meetings, for example. Taking public transportation, cobb salads, off the rack suits. But there are alarm clocks, and Ubers, and tiny Vietnamese restaurants tucked down side streets in Little Saigon, and exquisite British tailors in Union Square, so these are all things he can avoid. It seems Patrick can’t avoid his  _ feelings.  _ Now, with his pulse mothy and fast in his wrists and Pete’s body snugged up next to his and Pete’s wide eyes scrutinising every inch of his face? Patrick feels exposed and vulnerable and tender as an open wound. He makes an irritated huffing sound and commands himself not to cry. He’s not sure if that’s going to work.

Pete drapes an arm around Patrick, releasing the smell of his body spray. It’s familiar and comforting and Patrick takes a big, heart-slowing whiff and buries his face in Pete’s armpit. Pete rubs circles into the small of Patrick’s back, designed to soothe. Patrick becomes less prickle and spine with each even rotation of Pete’s wrist. 

“Okay, fine,” Patrick says. “Let’s start with the important stuff. Why’d you lie to me?”

“I maintain I didn’t  _ lie,” _ Pete says, his eyes sliding away from Patrick’s like he knows that’s bullshit. “You didn’t actually  _ ask _ if I had a kid, so, like, I didn’t need to lie.”

“You are walking a fucking wire right now,” Patrick informs him, eyes narrowed. Pete sighs and collapses like rotten fruit, all pulp and seeds and split-open skin.

“Honestly? I didn’t mean to lie,” Pete says. “By the time I figured out my feelings for you — and that you felt it, too — it was weird. When do I bring up something like that? Like, ‘Oh, by the way, I have a kid, I hope that’s not a problem. Could you hand me the lube?’” He scrubs his free hand over his jaw. “It was complicated. It’s still complicated. I’m — Aren’t you finding this complicated?”

“Shockingly, yes,” Patrick says drily. “Go on.”

“I just wanted to not be me for a minute,” Pete confesses quietly. “Being me fucking  _ sucks _ sometimes and I just… You didn’t know me. You saw this guy you wanted to fuck and I could be that guy, and that guy didn’t have to worry about making rent, or balancing the accounts at his shitty tattoo shop, or figuring out what to make for dinner when the only other person in the house doesn’t want to eat anything that isn’t made out of processed turkey and shaped like a fucking  _ dinosaur.  _ I just had to fuck, and I know how to do that.”

Patrick takes this in and feels thoroughly bewildered. “But you’re always so confident. I’ve spent this whole time thinking you’re the one who has it together.”

“I love being a dad,” Pete says. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me. But most of the time, that’s all I am. I’m Henri’s loser dad. When I was with you, I got to be someone else. I got to be Pete.”

“I am  _ very _ glad you are who you are,” Patrick says honestly. “And for whatever it’s worth, I don’t think you can, like, bypass your whole personality like that. You’re pretty amazing, you know. Okay, next question. Henri’s mom  _ is  _ your ex-wife, right?”

Pete gives him a shrew-y look of disdain. “No, Wall Street. He’s one of several thousand Pete 2-point-ohs. I’ve actually left a trail of them across the Eastern Seaboard  _ and _ Chicago and, one day, I’ll issue the command and you’ll see the uprising.” Patrick glares and Pete rolls his eyes.  _ “Yes, _ my ex-wife is his mom. I only had  _ one _ happy accident in my twenties, thank god.”

“You’re very sarcastic for a man on ice so thin polar bears think he’s being edgy,” Patrick informs him crisply. “Stop doing that. Stop pretending you can climb your way out of this particular hole with sarcasm and eye-rolling. I’m — I’m  _ so _ fucking pissed off right now, you have no idea.”

Another silence. Tense this time. “Next question?” Pete offers hopefully.

Patrick, his glare molten, considers drawing this out, but Pete offers him a charming smile and he gives in with a sigh. “Was he the reason you married her?”

“That’s… unfair,” Pete says, eventually. “I mean, I did love her, you know? When we found out she was pregnant it… seemed like the right thing to do. Morally. Plus, her dad is a judge in the Cour de Cassation in Paris and he fucking  _ terrified _ me, dude. So, like. It was also the right thing to do from a survival point of view.”

“She’s  _ French?”  _ Patrick squawks. The squawk really draws attention to how suburban and Midwestern he sounds. This is unfair. She has boobs  _ and _ a sexy, linguistic advantage. “Oh God, I can’t compete with  _ French!  _ My accent isn’t cool, like, at all. I call soda  _ ‘pop’ _ for fuck’s sake.”

“Yeah, I married her for the accent, that’s obviously what happened.” Pete shrugs and tugs nervously at his ear lobe. “Honestly, I was just relieved she didn’t move back home and take him with her.”

Patrick quickly changes the subject. “How old is he?”

“Six. Going on forty-two,” Pete says. “Like, do  _ not  _ argue with him about anything, you won’t be right.”

By the power of mental arithmetic, Patrick draws a conclusion: “So, he was only a baby when his mom left? That’s so sad.”

“Technically, I left. She still lives in our old apartment. She sees him every weekend, and she pays child support, so don’t even give me that fucking look.”

“What look?” Patrick asks. He holds up his hands. “I have never looked a look in my life.”

“The look that says you feel sorry for me,” Pete says bitterly. “Not all breakups are bad, not all non-resident parents are ogres, and not all kids who grow up with their loser, tattoo artist dad in shitty walk-ups in the Bronx wind up in jail for possession with intent to supply.”

“Oh,” Patrick says. “That’s a really specific look. I’m sorry if you thought I was giving you a look like  _ that.” _

“We make it work,” Pete says. “I drop Henri at school every morning, leave work early so I can pick him up. She takes him Saturday afternoon through Monday morning, I cover Sundays at the shop, everyone’s happy.”

Patrick looks at Pete and Pete looks at a spot between the toes of his sneakers and Patrick tries to untangle his feelings about the whole situation. Objectively, like this was a business portfolio dropped onto his desk. He highlights pertinent points, potential pitfalls, and considers the long-term outcome of continued investment. He leans a little further into Pete’s side, smells his smell and listens to their breathing.

“Okay,” Patrick says. “Okay, that’s good. It’s good that the two of you have things figured out.”

He’s just trying to think of something else a mature, responsible adult might say when Pete says, “The thing is…” and Patrick is struck by a fear so deep-rooted it feels fatalistic. Like he might die, right here, in the space where his heart is supposed to beat. Patrick can cope with many sentences that start that way, he’s sure. For example: ‘The things is, I have eighteen fuck buddies and all of them suck dick better than you,’ ‘The thing is, I actually have herpes and you should get checked out,’ ‘The thing is, I’m a Russian spy and I’ve been recalled to Moscow, so how do you feel about an illicit, but sexy, long-distance affair.’ And, seriously, all of those things would be okay. Aside from the dick-sucking one, Patrick’s pretty sure that would cripple him emotionally. But what if Pete is  _ breaking up with him? _

He takes a ragged breath and attempts to convince himself that no one would be cruel enough to demand  _ emotional transparency _ pre-break up. He makes a vague, bovine sound in the back of his throat and fights the immediate urge to sob uncontrollably. Pete looks at him, concerned. “Um,” Pete says. “Are you okay?”

“Evidently fucking  _ not,” _ Patrick wheezes. “Are you breaking up with me? Because if you are, then fuck you. I’ve got ten boyfriends and all of them are better in bed than you. I can’t believe you would—”

“Dude,” Pete interrupts, looking confused all the way down to his cellular structure. “Like... no? Absolutely the fuck not. What the fuck? I was just — This is a lot, right? It’s a lot to take in, and I... Wait,  _ ten _ boyfriends?”

“Shut up, I’m lying.” Patrick’s heart rate slows marginally. “Yes. Yes, it’s a lot. Go on.”

“Oh. Right. Well, the thing is,” Pete continues, “My kid will  _ always _ come first, that’s just a fact. I believe in the capacity to love more than one thing with all of my heart, but you need to know that if I have to make a choice, for any reason, I’m always going to choose Henri.”

“Okay,” Patrick says slowly. “So, what are you saying?”

“That being with me is a big deal,” Pete says. “My life isn’t straightforward. It’s — It’s kind of a mess, honestly.  _ I’m  _ kind of a mess. Or maybe, it’s that the only thing I’ve ever really excelled at is being a dad, and I don’t want to mess that up. I feel like there’s space in my puzzle but, like. The piece has to fit. You know?”

Patrick thinks about this. The bodega across the street has a liquor licence and Patrick feels like this conversation is an equation that could only be improved by the addition of whisky. He suspects Pete would disagree if asked, so he bites down on the soft edge of his tongue and jokes, “So, meaningless sex is off the table?”

He makes immediate plans to tape his stupid mouth shut. Pete looks startled and hurt and Patrick feels like the worst kind of person. 

“No way, we can totally have sex on the table, or on the coffee table, or in the shower, or against the living room wall if Henri’s at his mom’s. Technically, you can call me ‘daddy’ and it’s factually correct,” Pete says lightly, but his voice sounds strangled so he’s probably only half as full of bravado as he pretends to be. He takes a deep, shaky breath and looks at Patrick like he’s anticipating a blow. “Would you — Is meaningless sex what you want?”

Patrick is a man who has imagined Pete living in his apartment, sharing his toothbrush, has possibly looked at the formalwear in his tailor’s shop and wondered distantly at what kind of suit he might wear for their wedding. “No,” he answers honestly. 

“Look. I—” Pete pauses, biting the words off like broken glass. He swallows heavily and tries again. “I  _ really  _ like you. That’s basically the only thing I know for sure. It’s the only guarantee I can offer you and if it’s not enough, I get it. You just need to decide if you want a relationship with a loser tattoo artist, even if that loser tattoo artist also has a kid.”

“Right,” Patrick says, feeling overwhelmed and terrified and unprepared for any of this. “No, that’s. That makes sense.”

They fall silent. Pete plucks nervously at the hem of his shorts. He gives Patrick a long and speculative look from the corner of his eye. When he speaks, his voice is hesitant, uncertain. “So, like. Talk to me, Wall Street. Where’s your head right now?”

Pete is so close, Patrick can feel his heartbeat through his ribs, his chest shuddering with breath. Patrick stares at the same spot on the road because it’s easier than looking at Pete. His thoughts are messy, a tangled arterial system filled with hurt and confusion. He presses his knuckles into his eye socket and concentrates on not blurting out something stupid. It’s not easy. In any given situation, Patrick’s first reaction is generally to say something stupid. 

He settles on something straightforward: “I don’t know how I feel,” he admits, and, like. Never was greater truth spoken. “This is… a lot. It’s fucking  _ huge, _ actually.”

“Huge? He’s three feet tall and weighs, like, forty pounds.”

“Do  _ not _ test me right now,” Patrick bites. Pete looks sheepish. “I need to think. About this. Is — Is that okay? Am I allowed to think, or does thinking make me a horrible person?”

“Thinking makes you  _ way _ smarter than the guy who didn’t tell his boyfriend about the whole, um,  _ son _ situation,” Pete says, with a self-deprecating shrug. 

“I don’t feel like that’s a testament to either of our IQs,” Patrick says, his mouth quirking at the corners.

“Just for full and frank disclosure? This isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. It’s not even the stupidest thing I’ve done  _ this year. _ I feel like you need to know that. I do a lot of increasingly stupid things for ridiculous reasons and, if you stick around, you’re going to figure out pretty fast that I’ve spent three months casting an illusion of calm and sophistication. It’s all lies. I’m basically an idiot.”

Patrick shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have told me, either. I’m just. I’m going to call an Uber, ‘kay? I’m going back to my apartment, and I’m going to, um.  _ Think,  _ I guess. I’m going to think about this.”

“Can you at least wait at my place for the cab? Henri’s fine at the neighbour’s place,” Pete says, shoving to his feet and hauling Patrick up with him. 

Patrick nods and follows Pete toward his apartment in silence, his hands shoved down into his pockets. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, my lovelies. How's everyone holding up? For some reason, my phone insists it's almost June, which makes no sense because it's, like. Late March. At the latest. But apparently it's summer, and here I am, writing about NYC in the winter, like a chump. I hope everyone's doing okay, if you want to say hi I'm on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @yourtiredheart drew some super cute art for this fic! You can see it [right here !](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/yourtiredheart/619323803529576448) You should follow them, too!

For the first time in his life, Patrick doesn’t bury his emotions in the stock exchange.

Instead, Patrick chooses to live in a well-shielded cove just  _ beyond _ his emotions, a calm and settled spot where he can examine what the fuck just happened with his head, and not his heart. Or his penis. His penis and his heart make  _ horrible _ choices. He thinks he might be in shock. He doesn't text Pete, he doesn’t call Pete, both actions that are probably unforgivable. He does spend a lot of time staring at a blank message on his phone, his thumbs hovering over the keys, his heart frozen with indecision. It’s a lot, isn’t it? It’s possibly the most important text he’ll write in his life. He has no desire to fuck it up. He’s so awful at human interaction that he has no idea how  _ not _ to fuck it up. Life is a hilly mess of paradoxes right now. 

In an act of self-sabotage, Patrick lets things slide at work. This surprises no one more than Patrick. He clocks barely double his contractually-mandated 8 hours per day. His laptop spends more time displaying his screensaver than the CFDs. He processes no figures, no line charts, no complicated mid-to-long-term forecasts for the Trinity account. In a fun twist, he doesn’t replace work with sleep. He trades him REM cycle for boxset marathons, and besides, twelve hours in six days is fine, right? It’s  _ probably _ fine. It seems  _ fine.  _ Is that ringing in his ears his pulse, or an auditory hallucination?

Patrick stares at his laptop, or his TV screen, and thinks of nothing at all but kids.

One kid, specifically. The bundle of big teeth and brown eyes and Pete’s coded genetic material. The confounded jigsaw puzzle of blended families and new boyfriends and the idea that there might be space for another piece – if the piece fits. Patrick touches all of his edges, maps them out and tries to figure it out, but his lines feel splintered and it’s not like Patrick ever imagined himself in a position where he’d have to think about having a child in his life in any capacity. This is all very new to him.

(He doesn’t think of the word  _ ‘family.’  _ They will never be a family, because Henri has a dad and sexy French mom, and Patrick — Where would Patrick even begin to feature? The same puzzle? It seems unlikely that they’re even working from the same reference picture, but whatever.)

But, marbled through the flesh and nervous tissue of Patrick’s panic veins an obvious, unignorable truth: The truth is that Patrick  _ loves _ Pete. He loves Pete like breathing. He needs Pete like oxygen. All he needs to do is bring the two ragged edges of this particular wound together and then everything can heal with nothing more than a silvery scar left behind.

So, yeah. No pressure, whatsoever. 

Patrick has no one he can talk to about this. He tries to tell his mom. Really, he does. But he gets as far as ‘Do you see me as parent material?’ and she shrieks with such ear-shattering _joy_ that the population of Michigan probably hears her. He claims he was talking about dogs. If he tells her he’s dating a single dad she’ll have seventeen consecutive grandmagasms and start... _knitting socks,_ or something. This is his own fault. He never should’ve asked about Pete joining him at the wedding. Of course she’s going to _assume_ things. If he tells his siblings, they’ll tell his mom. His dad has the emotional intelligence of a house brick. So, update: Family support is out.

Other options are thin on the ground. Patrick associates with a lot of people through work, but he doesn’t  _ know  _ many of them, is the thing. Not to the level required for this kind of conversation. It seems like it might be inappropriate to discuss this with Andy since Andy is the barista who serves Patrick pulse-frying levels of caffeine and  _ is not _ Patrick’s actual friend. The only other person in Patrick’s phone with whom he shares a personal connection is his ex-boyfriend from college. Brendon sends him a text every Christmas. This seems beyond that.

That leaves one viable option. Joe Trohman: Financial Executive, Father of Two, Potential Friend. Last heard instructing Patrick to go ahead and commit suicide by stock exchange. A man owed an apology and a debt of gratitude for patience offered in the past. 

Patrick has to say sorry. There is no other course of action. He relishes this with the enjoyment reserved for invasive dental surgery. It narrows to this choice only, and Patrick isn’t a coward, so he plans a pincer manoeuvre of baked goods and bribery. He also isn't an idiot, so he plots a clear exit strategy through the nearest door should things get violent.

He said he wasn’t a coward. He didn’t say he  _ wants _ to get punched in the face.

Patrick arrives at the office the Monday morning after his first weekend without Pete with a cunning plan, two coffees from Andy’s shop, and a bag of mixed pastries. The  _ nice  _ ones, fat and flaky with butter, jewelled with pecans, and rimed with powdered sugar. This is not the time to scrimp and offer up plain croissants and subpar donuts. He places one cardboard coffee cup on the edge of Joe’s desk like he’s handing off the Olympic torch. 

“Good morning, Joseph!”

It’s been three days since he spoke to another person about something that isn’t corporate banking. His smile creaks, his jaw rusted. Joe does not look up, or speak, or respond in any way. 

“I brought coffee,” Patrick chirps, and hopes this might be straightforward and Joe will smile back and everything will go back to normal with minimal effort on Patrick’s part. Not because he doesn’t think he  _ should _ make an effort, but because making an effort is  _ hard _ and  _ embarrassing. _ Joe offers him a slow, unfriendly stare and says nothing at all. So, like. Obviously not. 

“Okay, I’m sorry,” Patrick says sheepishly, holding up the paper bag of grease and carbohydrates like a shieldmaiden. “I was an asshole and I shouldn’t have said those awful things about you and your kids. You’re good at your job, and you seem like a  _ great _ dad, and the problem is me. This is a Patrick Stump Issue. I’m a total dick.”

Joe takes a slow, deliberate sip of his coffee and does not break eye contact. It’s much more intense and intimidating than Patrick could’ve anticipated. Joe has the whole aggressive glare thing down to an artform. “Go on,” he says, his voice flat and calm and terrifying in a very Mads Mikkelsen way.

“Oh,” Patrick says. He sort of wasn’t expecting a standing ovation on the character assasination. He takes a deep breath and digs the spoon of self-flagellation further into the freezer-burnt ice cream tub of his own flawed personality. “I am… a moron. I’m self-centered, and I took advantage of how kind you were when you didn’t have to be, and—”

“No,” Joe says, digging into the bag and extracting a bear claw. “No, I don’t need to hear terrible things about  _ you _ . True things _ , _ by the way. You’re a total dick.” He takes a bite, chews, swallows. “But tell me more awesome things about  _ me. _ This is the way to soothe me.”

Patrick gets it; sucking up isn’t the worst way to apologise. “Right,” he says, nodding like a bobble head. “You’re looking, like.  _ Particularly  _ handsome this morning. Did you get a haircut? Is that a new suit? It complements your shoulders, makes you look very rugged...”

He spends the next twenty minutes extolling every known virtue of Joseph Mark Trohman and adds a few he’s made up as a gesture of goodwill. For example, he is  _ not  _ lying when he states that Joe is the best financial executive under thirty in the building, or when he points out that Joe has the shiniest hair, or that he finishes his tie with the best double Windsor knot. These are inalienable truths. But Joe  _ probably  _ doesn’t hold the land speed record, definitely didn’t man the first crewed mission to Mars, and he doesn’t have a spot in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame for most bodacious air guitar skills. It works, though. Three pastries and a coffee down, Joe smiles and shoves the bag across the desk toward Patrick. 

“Knock it off, Stump. You’re forgiven.”

Patrick wipes his brow with the back of his wrist, mimes flicking sweat from the tips of his fingers. “Oh, thank God. I was running out of nice things to say about you.”

“You can be  _ not _ forgiven just as fast.”

Patrick smiles and fishes a danish out of the bag. He flicks through his phone and examines the message thread with Pete. Annoyingly, the text hasn’t gone ahead and written itself. He sighs and places his phone face down in the top drawer of his desk. He locks it, firmly, and shoves the key into the bottom of his buttery soft leather messenger bag. At the next desk, Joe scrolls diligently through the daily stock returns. 

Now, Patrick confronts the difficult part of his plan. Now, he needs to ask Joe for advice on the whole Pete-Child situation without damaging the sincerity of his apology. Patrick doesn’t have time to waste, can’t devote a week or two to buttering up before he asks. There’s a Pete-shaped hole in his heart and Patrick fears he’s bleeding out. Patrick wants to blend in. He wants  _ so badly _ to camouflage his way into the landscape of Pete’s life — Pete’s  _ real _ life. A father-of-two knows the language, the local customs, the dress code. Joe is a friend, but also a passport. Patrick taps his thumb lightly against his business card holder and takes a deep breath. 

“So,” he starts brightly. “Kids, huh?”

Joe blinks at him. “Hmm?”

“Children. Offspring. Kiddos. Muffins. Fruit of your loins. Rugrats. Munchkins. Uh, brats — affectionately, of course.”

“Um,” Joe interrupts. “Is this story going somewhere?”

“No,” Patrick says, too quickly, the words skittering out of his mouth like tripping on ice. He takes a short, panicked breath and tries again. “I mean, yes. Sort of. I need some advice. Um. Please.”

Joe sets his pen down on the desk and folds his hands, fingers interlocked. One eyebrow begins a leisurely climb toward planetary orbit. “Uh _ —huh.” _

“It’s not a big deal,” Patrick says. His voice is very high. “It’s, um. It’s about children.”

“You’re asking me for advice?” Joe says. His other eyebrow joins the first. “About… children? For a guy who claims non-existence outside of T.A.I. Holdings, you ask the most…  _ interesting  _ questions. Why does Patrick Stump, Hedge Fund Manager, want to know about  _ children? _ Did you knock someone up? Did you  _ inherit _ a kid from a dead friend or something? Spill the deets, man. I’m on the edge of my seat.” 

Patrick coughs weakly. He blushes so hard he smells smoke. He offers Joe a sweaty shrug and says, “It’s not a big deal. Forget I said anything.”

“Oh  _ no,” _ Joe says, rolling his chair forward to cover the gap between their desks. He rests his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists and he looks at Patrick with wild-eyed  _ glee _ , like a Wall Street Gene Wilder. “Please. Go on.”

Patrick takes a deep breath and thinks about saying nothing. Then he opens his mouth and vomits out  _ everything.  _

“Okay. I just — I really don’t want you to think that I said sorry just so we could have this conversation, even though that’s  _ exactly _ how it looks. But, here’s the thing. I am a  _ disaster human, _ Joe. I’m the Hindenburg made person. And if I mess up being your friend as well as everything else… Well, like. What even is the point? Hmm? But, also? If I  _ don’t _ ask you, then I’m going to mess everything up with  _ Pete, _ and honestly, Pete is the only good thing to happen to me since — since. Oh, God. Joe. I don’t think a good thing has ever happened to me. Isn’t that tragic? Aren’t  _ I _ tragic? Jesus Christ, I… I think I might be having a panic attack.”

Joe listens to this and looks at Patrick like he’s checking him out for sharp objects. Like he thinks he ought to remove the hole punch from Patrick’s desk before there’s a Dramatic Incident. Like Patrick is one more fractured sentence away from a 50s coverup, atomic-level meltdown. Joe makes low, soothing sounds, as one might make to a wounded animal, and hands Patrick a glass of dusty-looking water from his desk. Patrick grabs the paper bag from the corner of his desk and attempts to breathe deeply into it. Unfortunately, the bag still contains a maple swirl, so Patrick breathes in chunks of flaky pastry and chokes, just to cement his role as Office Catastrophe. 

Joe says, “Wow,” an awed sound Patrick hears over his choking fit, and thumps Patrick soundly on the back. 

“Can you help me?” Patrick asks pathetically, when he’s coughed up half a danish and most of his left lung, and mopped ineffectually at his streaming eyes with the end of his tie. 

Joe gives him a look. “I dunno. God, can  _ anyone _ help you? I think you need to start at the beginning and, like, tell me  _ everything.” _

For a moment, Patrick imagines what it must be like to be the kind of person who has things like poise, or pride, or  _ dignity. _ Joe continues to stare at him with a wide, serial killer smile, clearly salivating for details. Patrick attempts to channel his blush into something constructive. Like spontaneous combustion. When that doesn’t work, he sighs and drinks the ancient glass of water and tries not to think about Legionnaires disease. For the record, it tastes exactly how he feels. 

“Okay,” he begins. “Don’t laugh, alright? So I have this, um... this de-stress program…”

Joe listens and cycles through all five stages of judgement: Horror, Disbelief, Confusion, Brief Stuttered Interjections, and finally, Pity. If Patrick imagined this might be cathartic, in a Catholic confession sort of way, he has been proved entirely wrong. All Patrick feels pathetic. 

“And that’s the story of how I met the love of my life, spent three months thinking he was married, then discovered he actually has a secret child.” Patrick finishes with jazz hands. For humour, or to distract from the fact that he’s probably going to cry, it could go either way. “My life is tragic.”

Joe opens and closes his mouth a few times, makes a few indecipherable vowel sounds before settling on a response. “That’s — Wow.”

Patrick hums in agreement. “Right? Now I need to figure out what being in a relationship with a dad actually  _ means,  _ and here you are! An actual dad! We’re off to a great start already—”

“So you just go out and, like —  _ Anyone, _ Patrick? Do you know how dangerous that is?” Joe interrupts, his brow furrowed with fatherly concern. This bodes well for Patrick’s plan, but he needs the paternal instincts  _ explained,  _ not  _ demonstrated.  _

“I mean,” Patrick huffs, “it’s a little more complex than  _ that.  _ I have, you know.  _ Standards _ and stuff, and I’m pretty good at picking out the  _ non _ -psychos. It’s a skill set, like finding a good tailor.”

“How do you even figure out a thing like that? What are the metrics by which you judge potential psychopathy in fucking  _ dive bars _ in the  _ East Village? _ ”

“Look, there’s — there’s a method, and. I could show you what I mean if we were, you know. In a bar. I could pick you out a half dozen totally hand-tame bears, just like that.”

“Jesus Christ. How are you not  _ dead?” _

“I don’t know! But obviously I don’t suck at it, so—”

“Clearly you suck  _ something…” _

“Oh, God. Can we get back on point, please?” Patrick begs. 

Joe shakes his head Etch-a-Sketch style, as if dislodging the image of Patrick on his knees in a club bathroom. “Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath and steepling his fingers under his chin. “Okay, I am calm and focused and absolutely not going to mention your…  _ unmentionables, _ ever again.” 

Joe closes his mouth and mimes locking it closed, throwing away a key. It’s not as reassuring as he probably imagines it is. 

They’ve completed no T.A.I. Holdings-related work for close to twenty-seven minutes now. This is a record, even by Patrick’s new metrics of low concentration and employment-based participation. Patrick hasn’t even switched on his laptop yet, and Joe’s is rotating through a cycle of photographs of his kids in various stages of  _ sticky. _

Patrick has no idea how to be a stepdad. Patrick has no idea how to queue up his own TiVo, or how to run the sleek, expensive dishwasher in his apartment. He absolutely should not be involved in the upbringing of an actual human  _ child. _

“This is hopeless,” he says gloomily, glaring at a picture of Joe’s eldest wiping what looks like snot, or possibly ectoplasm, onto a freshly-painted wall. 

“Nothing is hopeless,” Joe says, with the objectionable cheeriness of a man used to dealing with toddlers.

Patrick sighs deeply and cups his chin in his palm and looks at Joe. “How do I link the idea of Pete-the-boyfriend to Pete-the-dad?” he asks. “How do they co-exist, as concepts, when all I’ve seen so far is a fuckable tattoo artist with, like.  _ Biceps?” _

Joe wrinkles his face so aggressively, he looks like he’s sucking on a lime. “Okay, if you don’t want me to judge your sex life, you’re going to have to stop making comments like that.” 

“Sorry. It was conjecture, though. It’s not like I told you how big his—”

“Enough! God, enough. I am open-minded, Patrick, really I am, but I draw the line at the metric specifics of another man’s penis.” Joe holds up his hands in surrender and Patrick laughs for the first time in days. They watch the photographs cycle in silence for a beat, and then Joe says, “Okay. Do you love him?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, without a second of hesitation. “Yeah, I really do. He kind of blindsided me with the whole being nice thing. Hot guys are never nice. They’re too busy being hot. But he’s nice and I like him and now you need to sneak me past security, make me into a dad, and make sure the kid doesn’t suspect a thing.”

“You can’t just  _ become _ a dad,” Joe says.

Patrick looks Joe up and down. “Why not? You did! Based purely on your example, I’m guessing I need terrible suits and a wild-eyed look of panic whenever the phone rings?”

“Do you want my help, or not?”

No other options. Whatever Joe says, it will be the best advice Patrick’s received so far by default. 

“Oh, yes. Very much so,” Patrick says. “I promise I’m taking all your wisdom on board.”

“If you love him,” Joe says sagely, “then loving his kid is easy. His kid is an extension of him, a tiny, malleable clay person he’s raising to take on the world. You can’t do that without leaving a little bit of yourself behind in every fold of their personality. Kids soak up the world around them like money-leeching, snot-wiping sponges.”

Patrick grimaces. “You’re selling this  _ so hard _ right now.”

“Just being honest. But if the kid’s dad is awesome and the kid’s dad loves  _ you, _ then you’re golden. Just be yourself.” Joe gives him a brief, unflattering once over. “Or, like. Maybe not  _ exactly _ yourself. Maybe tone down  _ yourself _ by, like, half a dial. Be you, but less… obviously you. You know? Play down the Raging Dumpster Fire aspect of your personality for a while. You’ll be fine.”

Joe sits back in his chair and looks pleased with himself. Patrick looks at Joe with wide eyes and his mouth slightly open. Every word buzzes through his head like a chainsaw. Be himself? This is the problem — Patrick is terrible! He is… amazed. Yes,  _ amazed. _ Truly and inexorably  _ astonished  _ that someone — a  _ father, _ no less, wearer of the uniform Patrick needs to fake — could sit there and spout such unmitigated horseshit and have the audacity to look  _ smug _ about it.

“Oh my God,” Patrick huffs, flicking on his laptop as Joe gives him some serious side-eye. “If you don’t want to help me, all you have to do is say!”

Joe laughs at him —  _ Laughs! _ Like Patrick is a ridiculous little man! — and shakes his head with something like affection. “You’re the weirdest dude I know, Stump,” he says fondly. “Just fucking text him, okay?”

Patrick glares at his laptop and thinks that vulnerability is a highly overrated emotion. 

“That is the last time I buy you pastries,” he mutters ominously, under his breath. 

Patrick Stump, noted glutton for emotional self-punishment, hands over far too much bandwidth to what Joe says. He thinks about nothing else for most of the morning and into the afternoon, poking at it like a bruise, or the extraction site of a rotten tooth. He prods his own vulnerability and waits for it to hurt. It doesn’t. In fact it makes a logical sort of sense: if Patrick must enjoy the company of a tiny human,  _ obviously _ he’ll enjoy the company of  _ Pete’s _ tiny human most of all. After all, he likes spending time with Pete, and Pete likes spending time with Henri. It’s nothing more than a matter of probabilities. A logical conclusion. 

He even googles the childproofing required for a six-year-old in a turn-of-the-century New York apartment. Not much, it turns out: the kid is developmentally unlikely to lick any of the power outlets, or attempt to drink Lysol, according to the good folks at CafeMom. Patrick, a man in possession of a guest bedroom and Netflix, is basically set up with a small child terrarium. Toss in some nutritionally balanced snacks and an Xbox and he’s golden. God, kids are  _ so _ portable. Why does  _ anyone _ overcomplicate this?

Patrick begins to relax. 

This is a rookie mistake. 

“Knock, knock,” Will says, from the door. 

Everyone in the office goes still, like a prey animal. Patrick sinks into his chair, convinced that if he concentrates hard enough, he can form a singular compound with the expensive leather. Today, Will’s wearing Cavalli; a three piece the same colour as rich, melted chocolate, so well-cut it looks like he was poured into it. He’s paired it with a thick, creamy linen shirt, a handsome blood-red tie, and a look on his face that Patrick has seen only on Animal Planet.

“Patrick Stump,” he declares, with theatrical familiarity and a big, fangy smile that doesn’t reach his soulless eyes. “Patty. The Patster. Just the man I wanted to see.”

Patrick smooths his face into a neutral look of vague corporate interest and subtly closes the Pottery Barn window on his browser. “Yes, Mr Beckett?” he says sweetly. Because politics.

“We need to talk about your performance,” Will says. In front of everyone who works in the open-plan floor space shared by all hedge fund executives. A low breath of collective interest ripples around the room. Patrick blinks at a spot just beyond Will’s shoulder and feels his pulse thicken in his ears. 

“My performance?” Patrick repeats weakly. The office is a long way from the sidewalk, theoretically speaking. Patrick wonders: how unbreakable  _ is _ unbreakable glass, anyway? 

“You’ve been leaving early,” Will says. “Personnel leaving early causes me significant problems, Patrick. Personnel leaving early costs the company  _ money.” _

He perches his neat little rump on the edge of Patrick’s desk and toys with the plaque bearing Patrick’s name and job title. The implication is obvious, immediate. Patrick  _ feels _ his blood pressure rise.

Somehow, Patrick summons the courage to look Will in the soulless, blood-sucking eyes, and says, “I, um, I didn’t leave until ten last night, so, really...”

“You missed a telephone conference from Tokyo,” Will points out. Which, yes.  _ Technically,  _ Patrick missed that. But the conference was at 2a.m. EST, so he felt it was justified. Obviously, he can say none of this out loud. 

Will takes a leisurely circuit of the office and pauses at the floor-to-ceiling window directly behind Patrick’s desk. He looks out over the Manhattan skyline, one hand in his pocket, the other toying idly with the impeccably pressed hem of his jacket. He smells of expensive cologne, pomade, and predatory intent. Patrick fights every survival instinct to run away. He bites his lip and grips his own knees with bruising force. 

“We have a certain… reputation, at T.A.I. Holdings,” Will says, to his own reflection in the glass. “You were aware of this when you interned with us, and when you took the job. You benefit from the salary, the bonuses, we don’t ask for a lot in return, Patrick.”

The stomach ulcer medication in Patrick’s bathroom cabinet would suggest otherwise. “I’m sorry you think I’ve been slacking—”

“Don’t give me a political apology,” Will snarls, spinning on his heel and slamming his palm onto Patrick’s desk. Patrick jumps, and feels his heart ricochet against his ribs like a pinball machine. “You’ll show me improved figures, or you’ll find yourself available to pursue other opportunities. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

He clears his throat, looks Will dead in the eyes and says, “Loud and clear, sir.”

“Excellent,” Will says. He smooths his hair with another of those wolfy smiles. “Now get back to work.”

The office echoes with Patrick’s panicky breath. This is it. This is the moment he  _ dies _ at his  _ desk  _ with a stress-related aneurysm. This is not what he wants for his eulogy. Patrick’s hands shake so much he mistypes his password twice. Patrick doesn’t have time to think about Pete, or Pete’s son, or anything at all that doesn’t relate immediately to the Trinity account, and how to keep it. 

Patrick will think about his personal life later. In the Will-mandated fifteen minutes per day that he’s allowed to exist outside of T.A.I. Holdings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This morning, I discovered actual, honest to God blueberries in my back yard. So, like, last week's speculation was correct and _somehow_ it's summer. As I sit outside in the sunshine and write, obviously the best thing I can write _about_ is someone living their life in an office. It's like sating a craving for something I don't particularly want, but know I can't have. Like bacon-flavoured popsicles. Or crystal meth. Anyyyyway. Maybe I should speak to someone about this...
> 
> Hope you're all doing great!


	15. Chapter 15

Patrick works harder than he’s worked in his life. This is pretty intense coming from a man who once closed a deal while his sister exchanged her wedding vows. It’s a fairly all-consuming record to break.

He sleeps at the office, slumped over his desk, or on the closed toilet seat, propped up against the toilet paper dispenser. Dinner is whatever falls out of the vending machine on his floor because the cafeteria is downstairs and time spent in an elevator is dead time as far as T.A.I. Holdings is concerned. The untyped text message to Pete remains untyped. Every day, he looks at it. Every day, he tells himself he’ll find the time tomorrow. Every day, he means it. He hopes – with what little emotional energy he has left to invest in _hope_ – that Pete will understand.

This is the thing about being Patrick: he _means well._ He doesn’t mean to hurt anyone. He never did learn to stick the landing, though.

Friday night is the first night Patrick makes it back to his own apartment. His ability to create a home extended no further than hiring an interior designer when he moved in. The walls are painted rich, inky colours, designed to add character, the rooms filled with conversational furniture that’s never seen a single conversation. The art is bold, probably original, definitely expensive, but none of it means anything. 

It’s just a box to prevent homelessness. A museum exhibit to the mindless pursuit of the American dream. The air smells stale, unbreathed, even though someone comes in every other day to fluff the comforter he doesn’t sleep under, and wipe the surfaces he doesn’t touch. Patrick shrugs off his suit and showers, dressing in boxers, Pete’s sweatshirt, and his own ignominy. He thinks about eating, but he’s so tired his stomach hurts. Collapsing on the couch with his phone is easier.

In the end, he doesn’t text Pete. He doesn’t call him, or email him, or flash Morse code above the broken glass Manhattan skyline. When Patrick makes contact, he does so with intent: via Facetime.

Pete answers right away, his small and outrageously messy bedroom lit by the streetlights outside his window, his eyes dark and inscrutable. “Hey,” he says cautiously. It’s a little after midnight, but it doesn’t sound like Patrick woke him.

“Hi,” Patrick says. 

“It’s been ten days,” Pete says. 

“I know,” Patrick admits. “Got caught up at the office, you know how it is.”

Pete sits up in bed and knocks on the lamp. He’s shirtless—probably underwearless, knowing Pete—his hair tufty and curling over his ears. He doesn’t speak. He just… looks at Patrick, like he’s marked a place for his apology. 

“So, I think I need to say sorry,” Patrick begins. When Pete doesn’t disagree, he carries on, “I shouldn’t — Okay. What I mean is, I shouldn’t have gone to your apartment without warning you, and I shouldn’t have reacted how I did to the whole — _thing,_ and you’re right. I’m terrible at communicating what I feel and where I am in a situation. Like, how I thought we were dating so I invited you to a wedding, and _you_ thought we were fuck buddies and I scared the shit out of you. It’s like, when presented with any sort of conflict, I respond in the worst possible way. I need to work on that, I guess.”

Pete doesn’t speak, a reaction that suggests he agrees. Now more than ever, it feels like they inhabit different planets instead of different zip codes. Only their breathing fills the airspace between them.

“I miss you,” Patrick ventures eventually, when it becomes obvious that Pete isn’t going to speak. “I lived my first Pete-free weekend in three months and it sucked.”

“What did you do?” Pete asks. It’s obvious he wants to say _Did you cram that void inside you? Fill yourself up with someone else’s dick ‘til you didn’t ache?_ It wouldn’t be unfair. Patrick will die if he does. 

“Nothing much,” Patrick says quickly. “I lived off of cereal and toast and binge-watched Lucifer. I have, like, a _lot_ of questions about Los Angeles law enforcement. And, also, a crush on Tom Ellis. I think it’s the accent.”

The mood breaks like a fortune cookie. Pete’s half smile is silvered in the semi-gloom, limned with fondness and just a hint of teeth. “You want a British guy in a nice suit? My feelings are hurt, Wall Street.”

Tentatively, Patrick reaches out and picks up the conversational gauntlet. “I mean,” he says, allowing himself a small smile in return, “I’ll settle for an American guy in a muscle tee. If I’m picking purely on the metrics of hotness, you out-Scoville him every time. But he’s _the Moningstar,_ and I think maybe he’s magic? So, yeah. You need to up your game.”

“Become magic,” Pete says. “Gotcha. Have you been eating properly? You look tired.”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “I’m fine, mom. Seriously.”

The next silence is softer, easier. “So, what did you—” Pete says, right as Patrick says, “Here’s the thing—” They both fumble, spend a second or two insisting the other go first. Regrettably, Pete does not back down and devote the next five minutes to listing Patrick’s better qualities and how much he’s missed them. A speech Patrick’s sure would end with, ‘And that thing you do with your tongue is basically unrivalled. Consider me ruined for any other man.’ Pete doesn’t say this because Pete is a butt and Patrick has no idea why he likes him. 

Instead, Pete looks at Patrick expectantly and it’s up to Patrick to clear his throat and attempt to melt into the couch cushions and say, “The thing is, I’ve been thinking. About you, and. You know, about Henri.” 

Again Patrick pauses and gives Pete leave to break into the fray any time he feels like it. Pete hums but doesn’t speak, which is strictly uncool of him. This is going to buy Patrick _so many_ get out of jail free cards for future awkward conversations. Given their track record, he’ll probably cash them all within the next two weeks. 

“I’ve never imagined myself in a situation where I have a kid. Or even, um, _access_ to a kid,” Patrick says. Pete’s expression doesn’t alter. He looks at Patrick with lake-surface calm. “It’s just not a thing I thought about. But I also didn’t imagine meeting someone and falling for them. I thought that part of me was broken, and I didn’t need it. My ex-boyfriend _literally_ ran away and joined the circus, rather than stay with me. Like, I’m not even kidding. That actually happened.”

“Um,” Pete says. “This is a thing you need to expand on immediately.”

“He was a grad student, we went to the same school.” Patrick pauses and offers Pete the chance — _again! —_ to ask which school he went to. Pete, unsurprisingly, does not. Patrick sighs and continues. “He dropped out at the start of our final year and went to fucking _clown college_ instead. Did you know that’s a real thing? He tours with Cirque du Soleil now, he’s a — a fucking _acrobat._ He was supposed to be a statistician! Stop laughing! How is any of this funny?”

Pete’s eyes twinkle with enough starlight-force to power a city block. “Because it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. How do you _not_ find this funny?”

“Shut up, I’m trying to be heartfelt,” Patrick interrupts. “I’m trying to tell you how I didn’t think I’d ever fall in love, and then I met you, and you are… _so_ not the person I thought I’d fall in love with. You have no ambition. You have a job I will never understand. You always smell a little like corn chips—”

“You’re charming me to _death_ right now, Wall Street,” Pete interrupts, rolling his eyes. 

“I’m literally telling you I’m halfway in love with you,” Patrick points out, pouting a little. 

“You just said I smell like Doritos!”

“I said _corn chips,_ there’s a significant difference, asshole. Like a dog’s paws.”

“Yes, thanks, you’re improving my day with all this. Could we get back to the nice stuff?”

“God, I would if you’d stop interrupting me,” Patrick says. He’s noticed that Pete hasn’t said it back, a tiny tangled knot of panic curling through his chest. “It seems like dating a guy with a six-year-old is kind of an all-or-nothing situation, right?”

It comes to this. Pete eyes him with the same wariness that a rabbit eyes a rustle in the bushes, right before the rustle in the bushes manifests into a wolf. “I mean, we can keep it casual, probably. If you’re okay with Saturdays only, and you don’t mind late-night phone sex, and you understand why I can’t fly across the country for out of state family weddings, and—”

“And what if I say I want all? No holds barred, no take-backs, all in,” Patrick interrupts. An ominously sticky, child-sized handprint marks the wall above Pete’s head. “What if I want to date the dad, and meet the kid, and, like, take things slow but work toward… whatever it is we’d become? Is that still on the table?”

“Are you sure?” Pete asks. “Like, are you sure you’re sure? This is as much about me as it is about you. I don’t want to be a footnote to your career. You don’t get to dip in and out of our lives.”

“I can manage my time,” Patrick says, which is probably true. He can probably manage his time, at least some of the time. “I will almost definitely fuck up. But I’ll bring you flowers when I do, and I’ll say sorry and mean it, and I’ll try harder the next time. I promise.”

Pete tips one shoulder in a shrug. “And Henri? How well will you deal with him?”

“I’ve been Googling,” Patrick says airily. “I think I’m prepared.”

Pete gives him a look. “Oh, you Googled. Great. You’re totally ready to kill it, champ. Some highlights of my Google history as a father: _how to get blueberry puke out of a rug; slugs — which ones are the edible kind; is my kid dying or is it just butt rash._ Fucking _Google.”_

Patrick, vaguely horrified, says, “Why do parents go _out of their way_ to ramp up the horror?”

Pete’s eyes soften like warm caramel. He gives Patrick a grin so wide and toothsome it eclipses the watery light of his bedside lamp. Patrick is _blinded_ by the million-watt force of Pete’s smile. They grin at one another like idiots until Pete says, “Okay, this is good. I think I can have my lawyer draw something up.”

“Contractually mandated boyfriendship,” Patrick agrees. The tension he’s been carrying around finds a fissure, leaks out, and takes the throbbing pain behind his temples with it. “Very sexy. Wait. Isn’t that marriage? Are you proposing to me right now?”

“Trust me, when I propose to you, you’ll know about it. I’m kind of known for my outlandish romantic gestures. Ask literally anyone who knows me. Expect sky-writing, or a well-organised flash mob outside your office or something.”

And, not to over analyse or anything, but: _when_ , not _if._ _You_ , not _someone._ This is not a speculative proposal — This is matrimonial theorising with intent. Patrick will think about it later, pull it apart like tissue paper and examine what’s between the layers. 

For now, he just says, “Thank you. For picking up the phone in the first place, and for not hanging up on me, and for being generally awesome with my generally horrible attempts at navigating a relationship like the adult my driver’s licence says I am.” Patrick pauses and cocks his head to one side. “You know, you can break in any time and, like. Reassure me that I’m _not_ as unfixably awful as I’m making myself sound right now.”

“I thought you were making a lot of salient points,” Pete says, his face grave and serious. He holds the expression for less than three nanoseconds before he explodes into laughter. “God, you’re such a dork. You’ve got hangups stapled to your hangups. You’re doing fine, man. We’re figuring it out together, right?”

Pete smiles at him from the screen, lopsided and lovely and hopeful. This feels like a test. Patrick pops a hoodie string between his teeth and chomps it like red licorice. Togetherness is not a concept that sits easy with his neurotic tendencies. His life so far has been nothing but solo operations of increasing complexity. He has no idea how to operate with a co-pilot.

Might be easier, though. To have someone check the parachute. 

“Together,” he says, nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds — it sounds great, actually.”

“Will I see you tomorrow?” Pete asks.

“Dude, _yes._ I haven’t gotten laid in two weeks. Come prepared.”

Pete’s smile is golden.

“Oh, I have _missed_ you.”

Patrick straddles Pete’s thighs, his back to Pete’s chest. He braces his toes into the fuzzy softness of the bedside rug. Awareness is a funny thing and he experiences it at two separate and distinct frequencies. For example, Patrick is very aware of Pete’s fingers, hot and damp as they swirl over his navel and along the knocked arrow of his happy trail. Patrick could track every blood cell filling and thickening his cock. His pulse feels like it’s buzzing. 

On the other hand, anything beyond the national border of his bed sheets is nothing but thick, grey static. Patrick twists his hands into his own hair and tugs with gentle determination.

“I don’t understand what’s happening right now,” Patrick murmurs, his voice syruping thick and urgent. Pete’s breathing is excited and fast in his ear and Patrick’s hot on it. His dick strains up, tall and proud and thick with blood, and Pete’s erection answers this call of the wild in the small of Patrick’s back.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Pete murmurs, pressing a messy kiss to Patrick’s throat. His mouth slides, follows a slick and heated trail to Patrick’s ear lobe. He seizes it between his teeth and tugs. Patrick’s nervous system replicates the sensation of taking forked lightning to the perineum.

“Not really,” Patrick gasps, his voice shaking. The throb of his pulse in his penis is too much to ignore: Patrick takes hold of himself and squeezes slowly. Just to feel. Behind him, Pete looses a breathy groan and rolls his thumbs over Patrick’s nipples.

“You look _so_ good right now.”

What Patrick knows is this: He knows his legs are spread wide, his thighs aching though he’ll never admit it, every hidden inch of him on display. He knows Pete can see things that Patrick hasn’t seen _himself._ He knows Pete is hard and excited by it, his hands groping over Patrick’s pale skin, his dick thick and hot as anything in the cleft of Patrick’s ass. He knows that directly across the room is an antique mirror of imposing proportion, picked out by an interior designer who probably did not have this in mind when she chose it. Or maybe she did. Maybe he looks the type to push the envelope on socially-acceptable mirror usage. Whatever.

 _He_ can’t see a fucking thing, the blindfold smooth and slick against his sweat-damp skin. Patrick wants to see. Patrick is _so embarrassed_ by the idea of seeing. The itch crawls through his veins, his blood a boiling mess. He makes a noise of gut-hurting _want_ and sinks his fingernails into Pete’s forearm.

“You’re hot for this, don’t fake like you’re not. I can _see_ you,” Pete says, his mouth so close he’s pressing the words into Patrick’s skin. If they leave behind scorched and smoking marks, Patrick won’t be shocked. Pete cups Patrick’s junk in one palm and squeezes, his long middle finger pressing back and down to rub over Patrick’s hole, his fingertip _just_ sinking inside. The roots of Patrick’s teeth ache with need. Every point of contact strengthens the static buzzing between them. Patrick is half a watt away from blowing faster than a power outage.

So. Okay, yes. Patrick’s hot for this. The hotness is not up for discussion, measurable as a solar event. He tips his head back and fumbles blindly for a kiss, tastes Pete’s teeth and velvet tongue. This is it for him – the culmination of all sensation and Pete’s barely touched him. He’ll die before he says that out loud, though. “Whatever,” he whispers into Pete’s mouth. Could be his imagination, but he thinks he’s leaking already. “You think you’re hot shit, don’t you?”

“The thing is…” Pete says, pausing to imprint his dental records into Patrick’s shoulder. God, but they _connect_ like this, like a neat and intuitive circuit, an ever-present loop of touch and tingle. “It’s like… an allegory, right? The only person who can’t see you, is you. You can’t hide from me like this, can you? You’re only hiding from yourself.”

The finger slips in further, to the second knuckle. Patrick takes this slow and leisurely invasion without patience. This is not the time for debate class. “More,” he demands. “Like, now.”

“Bitchy,” Pete says fondly, then he touches Patrick’s prostate, digs into it in time with Patrick’s pulse under Pete’s mouth.

“Holy mother of – fuckfuckfuck,” Patrick hisses. The angle is off. Toes brushing the floor, he lacks the purchase to grind down. He is at the unforgiving mercy of Pete’s ability to hold out on him. “You just want to watch yourself, you vain fuck.”

Pete laughs, low and dirty. It curls around Patrick like smoke, or an oil slick, thick and sticky. Patrick tingles so hard he must be giving off sparks. Between them, they’re a fire hazard, an incendiary risk to the whole apartment building. The double-click of the lube cap ricochets off the walls like a gunshot. Or maybe Patrick’s imagining it, maybe his hearing is sharper now he’s not allowed to see. He digs his thumb into the meat of his thigh and feels the cold drizzle of lube between his cheeks.

Pete’s broad forearms slide under Patrick’s knees, hoisting him up and open and God, God, the view in the mirror must be _obscene._ Patrick’s lungs stutter, each breath a quick and choking gasp. He wants to slam his thighs together; he wants to spread so wide he splits himself apart. Pete fastens his mouth to Patrick’s throat, mops up Patrick’s buzzy moan with his tongue. Fingers – two – breach him far too slowly, Pete’s free hand curled around Patrick’s cock.

“God, Patrick,” Pete murmurs, his hands working in perfect 2/4 tandem over Patrick’s most sensitive places, “look at you, babe. Fucking _look at you.”_

Patrick grits his teeth; fingers are such a poor substitution for the thick, hard cock trapped between his back and Pete’s belly. “Tell me.”

And Pete does. The filth he whispers makes Patrick blush, makes Patrick hot all over, makes him shiver and sweat and push himself down to meet Pete’s hand until Pete’s knuckles kiss the curve of his ass. This is a preliminary Patrick no longer has patience for. He makes an urgent, strangled sound into Pete’s mouth and breathes, “Fuck me. Please. I’m so ready.”

A small flurry of activity occurs at Patrick’s asshole: Pete’s knuckles and the slick, wet tip of his swollen-beyond-rationality cock. He withdraws his fingers, replaces them with just the flared crown before Patrick can mourn the loss. Pete doesn’t move. Like a pause. Like a question mark. Patrick doesn’t need to see to know what Pete’s face looks like right now; his brow pinched, his flat, wide mouth serious.

Pete nips his ear. “Yeah?”

“Fuck you, _yeah,”_ Patrick hisses.

“You’re so _bossy,”_ Pete says. The first swollen inch of him slips inside. 

The noise Patrick makes is indescribable; a broken, ragged moan because words – words don’t cover this. Pete works inside of him with slow, smooth strokes, rests his forehead against Patrick’s damp shoulder, and pushes the air from Parick’s lungs in a grateful gasp. Patrick feels full the point of bursting, the kind of fullness that stretches his joints. The kind of fullness he feels in his fingers and toes. Pete slides: out an inch and then back in two. Patrick reaches back and grabs a fistful of Pete’s hair and grips until his bones hurt.

“Fuck me,” Patrick breathes, “like you paid me for it.”

Pete makes a sound like he just got hit by a Mack truck, and enjoyed it. “Fuck yeah.”

Their hips move with a singular purpose. One broken-open, messy thing. A single collapsing vein of hips and hearts. Pete presses his mouth to Patrick’s ear, wet and gasping and filled with filth. He tells Patrick what he sees in the mirror, his fingertips ten points of bruising force on Patrick’s skin. This transcends all previous sensation: Patrick soars, weightless, grappling with his own swollen dick. 

Soft rug meets hard knees. Patrick is not consciously aware of moving, but knows he must’ve done so because now he’s on all fours and Pete is behind him, pushing into him again, big hands wrapped over Patrick’s ribs and pulling him upright. The angle shifts; Pete finds the hot golden gland of Patrick’s prostate at the deepest point of each stroke. Patrick’s blood is now mercury. This must be how it feels to collapse like a star. Patrick’s hand finds the surface of the mirror as Pete’s hand finds Patrick’s cock. Stroke and thrust, push and tug. Patrick fills his mouth with his own knuckles and bites down to muffle his whining.

So close. _So close._ He bucks back into each thrust forward of Pete’s hips. So close becomes too close and Patrick slips against the glass and feels his body give in a singling unrelenting pulse and — 

Patrick comes – or else loses his grip on this plane of reality entirely. He comes with Pete huge and hard and hot inside of him. He comes with his forehead kissing the cool plane of the mirror, his fingers wrapped around the edge of the frame as Pete pounds him through it, expanding the glowing heat of Patrick’s orgasm until he feels it all the way down to his _soul._ Patrick comes, and Patrick comes home, and Pete pulls out, rests his slick forehead between Patrick’s shoulder blades and paints the small of his back with thick, hot spurts. 

“Love you,” Pete is whispering, over and over again. “Love you, love you, love you so much.”

Patrick no longer possesses the rigidity of a skeletal structure. He’s made of putty and jelly and he leaks into the floor as Pete’s weight presses him down. “Love you,” he slurs, his mouth connected to his dick. Maybe his heart. Definitely not his brain.

Their breathing evens. They collapse. 

Time passes. Patrick knows this, because he’s in his bed, and the blindfold is gone, and his skin is gritty with dried sweat. He curls around Pete and follows the lines of his tattoos with his fingertips. Pete hums, content, and plays Angry Birds on his phone. It is entirely, wonderfully domestic. 

“Next time,” Patrick says, “I’m not wearing a blindfold.”

Pete knocks their noses together, kisses Patrick softly. “See how much better things are when we talk?”

Patrick clings to Pete like a koala, kissing his shoulder, his chest, the dark and perfect circle of the nipple closest to Patrick’s mouth. Pete carries on flipping through his phone. He likes a tweet. He emails Gabe. Patrick’s never felt this peaceful in his adult life, and he’s not sure what to do with it. It makes him nervous, waiting for the other shoe to drop, so of course he says something self-sabotaging, just to keep himself on his toes. 

“So, like — The kid thing? How’s this gonna work?” Patrick asks, his voice shredded.

Pete tips his head to one side like a collie. “Well, you’re not meeting him right away. There are, like, _things_ you need to do. Like, missions, you know? Um, _quests,_ almost.”

“Is he a six-year-old, or the One Ring?” Patrick jokes. He laughs, but Pete doesn’t. “Okay, seriously, what kind of quests are we talking about? Do I have to answer three riddles? Steal an enchanted goblet? Is there a dragon?”

Pete’s eyes crinkle up and his mouth tips at the corners, but the expression on his face is less smile and more grimace. He scrapes a hand through his sweaty hair and rubs his cheek against Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick is hit by a gale-force surge of unease. 

“Pete,” he prompts, dragging it out over several syllables. 

“It’s nothing!” Pete declares. He muffles the next part in Patrick’s throat. “You just have to meet Bebe, that’s all. No big deal.”

Patrick’s stomach drops to his knees with force. He doesn’t know who Bebe is, but he has a feeling he can guess. The guess is horrifying. Patrick is in love with Pete, which is great. Seriously, it’s _awesome,_ he really couldn’t be happier about it, but he still has his self-preservation, dammit. 

“Who’s Bebe?” Patrick asks, his face an iron mask of fake not-panic. 

Pete shrugs, and smiles his stupid, handsome, _charming_ smile. He takes a handsy fistful of Patrick’s rump and squeezes like it’s a stress toy. He presses his mouth to Patrick’s ear and nibbles on the lobe. He flips Patrick onto his back and slides down his body like it’s a goddamn fireman’s pole. His mouth hovers briefly over the swollen pink tip of Patrick’s disloyal half-chub. Patrick has no desire to be aroused right now. He’s a victim of his own confounded bodily functions, his dick a Pete-seeking missile. This is all so clearly a trap. Patrick’s heartbeat accelerates through several medically mandated danger zones. 

“Peter,” he says again, firmly this time. Well, as firmly as possible for a man with a hard-on. “Who the fuck is Bebe, and why do I have to meet her?” 

Pete licks his lips and presses a sweet, wet little kiss to the tip of Patrick’s quivering cock. 

“If you yell, I will _not_ suck you off,” he says, in an attempt to hold Patrick’s fear hostage to his libido.

What Pete doesn’t understand is that, thanks to the genetics of a long line of European peasants, Patrick possesses thighs that could crush Pete’s windpipe with a single twist. Yelling is not the greatest risk to Pete’s health right now. He takes a grippy handful of Pete’s hair, tilts him up, and says, “Who — is — Bebe?”

“My ex-wife,” Pete says, in a jumbled-up rush of sound. “Henri’s mom. You have to — You’ve got to meet her, before you meet him. It’s, like. The Guidelines. Ten Simple Rules for Dating My Deadbeat Ex-Husband.”

Patrick squeaks like a dog toy. The back of his tongue tastes of rusted steel. He wonders, if he makes a run for it, can he outpace his own terrible inability to deal with adult situations. 

“It’ll be fine!” Pete declares, nuzzling happily against Patrick’s balls. “Just imagine it’s a business meeting and she’s a difficult pitch. You’re gonna knock it out of the park, slugger!”

Patrick knew it was coming. Patrick _knew it was coming,_ and it still fills him with icy-cold dread, an epidural of panic delivered directly to the base of his spine. He experiences _brain freeze_ of the limbic system. There is _no way on earth_ Pete’s ex is going to look at him — neurotic, awful testament to modern stockbroking _him_ — and see a man allowed within restraining order distance of her _son._ He has fooled Pete only via the use of frequent orgasms. With Bebe, he can only rely on his charm, so he's basically fucked. His dick wilts like a creamsicle in the sun. 

“Oh,” he says vaguely, like a man looking at his own severed limb on the sidewalk. “That’s, uh… Yeah. When do you think we’ll do that?”

Patrick is planning a date some time in the next millennium or beyond. Maybe he can free up his diary shortly after the earth crashes into the sun. This is not the kind of event undertaken on a whim. He needs time to plan, to rehearse, to… find a new job in a different state, or maybe Sydney, where Pete does not live, and none of this matters. 

“Tuesday,” Pete says brightly. “She freed up some time for lunch. I told her around 1 would be great for us.”

Okay, well. That settles it. Patrick has seventy-two hours and _no other choice_ but to emigrate to a notably unpopulated area of Russia. He hears Siberia is lovely this time of year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't know if I should post a chapter this week, or if it was insensitive to talk or think about things that are happening outside of the horrific actions of POTUS and the corrupt police system that serves him. I hope you guys know that my decision to post isn't me saying I don't care about these things, I care deeply about the Black Lives Matters movement. I won't say I don't want to get political - I do want to get political, I want everyone to get political. I want the world to come to its collective senses to stamp out injustice. 
> 
> But, having thought about it, I think maybe we need a small space on the internet where we can decompress for a minute from the horror playing out in towns and cities across the US. I hope everyone is staying safe, wherever you are and whatever you're doing.


	16. Chapter 16

There’s little to no information on the internet about meeting the mother of your boyfriend’s child. No how-to guides. No simple to understand, ten-point lists that cover the basic etiquette, suggested outfits, whether or not a gift is appropriate given the situation. Should Patrick wear a suit, or dress down in casual khakis and a dad-ish sweater? If he takes a gift, should he stick with flowers? Or is a sacrificial baby goat more _de rigueur?_

“But, seriously,” Patrick says. It’s eleven on Monday night, every item of clothing he owns is littered across the floor of his walk-in closet. Ankle-deep in tailoring, he looks like the victim of a thorough burglary or an area-specific hurricane. “Is this a suit and tie event, or should I wear the cardigan? Are jeans too informal? Will she be impressed if I wear a tuxedo?”

“I mean,” Pete says, sounding bewildered. “You can totally wear whatever you want, it’s a free country, but if you show up in black tie and tails, she might mistake you for a waiter. Or a tiny stripper. Or an escaped penguin from Central Park Zoo.”

“You are being unhelpful,” Patrick accuses. Even he can hear the hysterical edge to his voice.

Pete’s eyeroll is audible. “Seriously, I can’t explain to you how much she won’t judge you based on your clothing choices. Why would she, when there are so many other things she could judge you for? Dating me, for example.”

“Not helpful!”

“Babe. Your suits cost more than my couch—not my current couch, that thing sucks, the kind of couch I used to own, _before_ I turned into a bum. Besides, you’re coming from the office, right? Just make like Nirvana and come as you are.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down,” Patrick bleats. “Herringbone or charcoal wool? Three piece or two? Oxfords or brogues? American cut or English—Wait, that’s stupid, who wears _American_ cut suits? Do I bring a gift? Does she like roses? Chocolates? I think I have a decent bottle of _Cote de Noits_ in the cabinet. It was a corporate gift, but, like, _she_ doesn’t know that—”

“Patrick, _Patrick, stop,”_ Pete cuts over him. The edge to his voice suggests this is not the first time he’s said it. Patrick stops and blinks at himself in the mirror—he’s got three ties around his neck, his hair stands at improbable peaks and angles, and the left shoe of a pair of exquisite handmade wingtips dangles from one finger, he looks _insane—_ and pays attention to exasperated, irritated, faintly and unfairly amused Pete.

“Yes?” he says cautiously.

“Babe, you’re taking this way too seriously,” Pete says. 

In the mirror, Patrick looks incredulous. “Uh, have we met? I take _everything_ too seriously. But, also, consider this: What if I’m not taking this seriously _enough?”_

Pete doesn’t say anything for a while. Patrick’s about to feel uncomfortable until he realises Pete is breathing slowly and deeply and Patrick is following him. The risk of a panic attack fades; Patrick puts down the shoe and sits, his back propped against the wall.

“Okay,” Patrick says to his knees. “I’m calm. Go on.”

“Alright,” Pete says. “So, this is just a formality, okay? She just wants to know you’re not a serial killer, or an organ harvester, or a prosecutor for the Specialist Fraud Division. You’re not, are you? That would be _awful_ for her client base.”

“If SVU taught me anything at all—and I like to think it did—it’s that prosecutors are calm. Prosecutors function well under pressure. Do I strike you as someone who would make a decent prosecutor?”

“Fair,” Pete says. Then, “Listen. Bebe is _okay._ Nice, even. And I say that as the guy she divorced. If you can hold a coherent conversation, you’re golden.”

Patrick makes a soft, strangled sound and wishes they were in the same room. A room with a large glass of scotch and soda and a couple of emergency Diazepam.

“And what if I _can’t?”_

“Then I’ll convince her you’re my little Swedish meatball and you don’t speak a word of English,” Pete says, laughing. “You can just sit there and look pretty, and you’re _so good_ at that! Foolproof, see?” 

Patrick exercises his right to remain silent and wishes Pete wasn’t quite so relaxed about his imminent trial by ex-wife. 

Pete sighs, “Babe, listen to me. You’re a _nice guy._ A way nicer guy than you give yourself credit for, just… stop trying to make people like you for the things that _don’t_ matter. No one cares about the job, or the salary, or how many fancy suits you own. Just… be Patrick. Patrick, my boyfriend, not Patrick, corporate banker. How could she _not_ like you?”

Which is sound advice, only, Patrick’s not sure if there _is_ anything about him—just, _him—_ that’s likeable. Set aside the salary, and the apartment, and the exquisite taste in tailoring, and there’s nothing but a drab little brown mouse from the Chicago suburbs, pretending to be one of the sewer-savvy New York rats. Wall Street makes him a real boy—without it, he might just fade from corporeality entirely. He pushes his hand through his hair and honks sadly into his knees.

Pete says, “Alright. Have you eaten? You get weird when you haven’t eaten.”

“I’ve had dinner,” Patrick says.

Which isn’t a lie. If standing at the kitchen counter stress-eating fistfuls of chocolate and peanut butter cereal from the box, flipping between the CFDs and CafeMom and experiencing bouts of panic over the Trinity account in between bouts of panic over Bebe counts as dinner. He chews aggressively on his thumb nail and mumbles, “Okay. But what if—”

“Do you know what your problem is?” Pete interrupts, and, like, honestly? _That’s_ what he’s going to lead with? Patrick has an itemized list of his problems, arranged in colour-coded internal folders, organised alphabetically and cross-referenced. Where would Pete like him to start? Personal or educational? Inflicted by high school or his daddy issues? Work-related or by order of suffocating sense of inadequacy?

Patrick draws breath, and prepares a short monologue but before he can speak, Pete says, “Seriously, _do not even_ actually list your problems. I have a very particular problem in mind: You overthink _everything._ And the thing is, after this, you have to meet Henri. And if you can’t deal with meeting my ex, I can’t trust you to meet my _kid,_ so, like—Do not fuck this up for us.”

Patrick watches his face turn pale and blotchy in the mirror. Again, he opens his mouth to object, and again, Pete talks over him. “Don’t, okay. Don’t say _anything._ I bombed out of a legal career in my dad’s field to become a tattoo artist and raise my happy accident _after_ getting divorced. I _know_ family, career, _and_ romantic disappointment. This is a pissing contest you will not win. You’re going to meet us for lunch tomorrow, and you’re going to be amusing and charming in your very bleached way, and everything is going to be fine, ‘kay?”

“But—”

“I swear to God, Patrick, if you say ‘what if’, I’ll come to your apartment right now and gag you myself.”

Patrick chews on his bottom lip and sighs. “I don’t want to be like this, you know,” he says. “I don’t want to freak out about everything, and overthink everything, and just feel… fucking inadequate, like a kid playing dress-up. I want to be… good enough. For you, and for Henri. And to be good enough for you, I have to be good enough for Bebe, so this is—you understand why this is sort of a big deal for me, right?” He trails off, his own vulnerability too much to say out loud in one sitting.

It’s Pete’s turn to sigh. “I get it. And, honestly, I wouldn’t put you through this if I didn’t think it would be fine. I don’t want you to drop down dead with a stress-induced heart attack. I’m kind of in love with you, Wall Street. You’re it for me.”

It turns out, Patrick will never grow tired of hearing Pete say that out loud. He experiences the same visceral jolt of surprise in the base of his spine, the same lightning bolt of excitement, of _belonging._ In the mirror, his smile is borough-wide. It’s the way Pete says it; almost carelessly, like he has nothing to prove, like Patrick’s lovability is obvious, when, clearly, it’s not. Patrick has never been loved—never loved someone in return. It’s as terrifying as it is exhilarating.

“Yeah. Yeah, love you, too.” A short, loaded pause, and then, “So, gag me, huh? We, uh. We’ve never done _that…”_

“No,” Pete says. His voice drops to a honeyed growl. “That’s one of the times I actually _enjoy_ the sounds that come out of your ridiculous mouth.”

Patrick’s dick perks. A little light-hearted phone sex might distract him from the knot of existential dread building in his belly. 

“Want to hear me make some more?” he asks, his fingers creeping over his thigh, towards the growing epicentre of heat and hardness pushing against his pajama pants.

“Fuck, Patrick,” Pete says, his voice pleasure-pained. “Yes. Yes, I do. Switch to Facetime?”

Patrick closes his eyes, and his fist around his dick, and lets Pete talk him through whatever he wants Patrick to do. It’s hot and it’s sweet and Patrick finds it so much simpler to reach that golden space of stillness when Pete is directing him through his own head. Patrick gives himself over and doesn’t think.

They pick a bistro in Tribeca for lunch. It’s a convenient Uber ride for Patrick and Bebe in the FiDi; a much less convenient schlep across Manhattan on public transportation for Pete. Patrick tries not to feel guilty about it—the sense that everything they do is chosen to convenience _him—_ fails, and resolves to angst about it later.

The restaurant is nice, notably expensive, the menus leather-bound and written in flowing cursive on thick, creamy paper. There are quiet little booths for romantic dates, and long tables designed to encourage booze-soaked business luncheons. The wine list is at least four times thicker than the à la carte menu and both are written in French without translation. The waiter exudes an air that discourages guests from asking for one. Each table bears a glass vase of fresh velvety white roses. The smell of money is almost as strong as the smell of Provençale chicken and côte de boeuf.

Patrick’s closed deals here, schmoozed and networked and kissed all of the correct asses—figuratively, nothing extracurricular—and he rides that sense of workplace bravado out of the car and through the door. Fake it til you make it. Everything is going to be fine. Everything is going to be absolutely fine because he’s a charming, confident man, and he’s definitely _not_ going to upend a bottle of red wine over Bebe on accident.

His day so far: Not great. There was a conference call to Dusseldorf with his least favourite client and a meeting with the board of directors about cumulative stats for the financial year. Patrick’s making figures that end in an unreasonable number of zeros but the short story is, they’d like him to make _more._ Patrick is stressed. And, also, running twenty-five minutes late, which he thinks qualifies him for the executive position of Worst Potential Stepdad Ever. A position that comes with an empty apartment, a long-running and unsatisfying relationship with Grindr, and a bedside trash can filled with sticky Kleenex.

By the time the maître d takes his coat and scarf, he’s sweating through his shirt and making aquatic headway into his jacket. His tie, hair, and glasses are adjusted briefly in the reflection offered by the copper coffee machine on the bar, so he probably looks as flustered as he feels. Another conference call is due to start in an hour. There’s a stack of paperwork on his desk that requires immediate processing. Patrick thinks, sweaty with guilt, that he doesn’t have _time_ for this.

Then he sees Pete.

Irrationally handsome and seated at the far end of a corner booth, lounging back into the dark leather banquette, a glass of red wine cradled in his hand. He’s wearing an ink blue collared shirt and tailored grey pants. His jaw is uncharacteristically smooth, his hair neat with too much product. This is the first time Patrick’s seen him in clothing that fastens with _buttons._

Pete makes smiling eye contact with Patrick. “Babe, you made it,” he says, standing.

“Hey, you,” Patrick says. He’s still amazed he gets to touch this man. “You look… really nice.”

Patrick realises he’s smiling back without thinking about it, easy as breathing. The stress lifts from his shoulders and Patrick breathes for the first time all day. Then, Pete says, “Bebe, this is Patrick, my boyfriend.”

“So sorry I’m late,” Patrick gushes, and means it. Pete’s hands circle his waist, under the jacket, over the shirt. Pete presses a brief kiss to the corner of Patrick’s mouth. “Traffic, you know?”

“Patrick’s a total billionaire-wrangling badass,” Pete’s saying to the platinum blonde seated at the booth. In the brief moment where they fuss with menus and clear space for him on the bench, Patrick’s distantly aware that she is small, petite, beautiful. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” she says politely. Her accent is as devastating, as charming, as he feared it would be. “Pete’s told me so much about you.”

“Only the good things, I hope!” Patrick turns and offers her the pink and sweaty paw of a sea monster. Then they make eye contact. They freeze as one. Patrick feels all the blood in his body flow away from his face. He doesn’t stop smiling, but it’s fixed, carved onto his face like a Halloween pumpkin. He makes a brief, horrified squeak, all the way up at the top of his register. “Uh,” he says. “I—Um. Hello… again.” 

“Patrick… Stump, yes?” she says, with serial killer calm. Her voice is several Kelvins colder than it was before. She no longer sounds like she thinks it’s nice to meet him, his hand unshaken between them. “What a... surprise.”

And, no. No, no, no. This can’t be happening. This _does not happen_ outside of Netflix specials and situational comedies. Patrick’s life has not reached this level of farcical bullshit. Of all the tattoo artists in all of Brooklyn, she had to be married to Pete.

“Ms Rexha,” Patrick barely whispers. “You’re Ms. B. _Rexha._ Obviously, you’re Bebe Rexha.”

“Should I have used Wentz?” she asks lightly. “I didn’t. Not even when we were married.”

She takes a big, bloody gulp of her Merlot. Patrick considers the merit of grabbing what remains of the bottle on the table and swigging it direct from the neck. Alcohol. Alcohol will improve this terrible situation. Alcohol, or running away.

“I didn’t make the connection at all, actually,” Patrick admits weakly. “I mean, who would? _Ha, ha, ha,”_ the laugh is forced, he sounds unhinged.

Pete looks between the two of them, his eyes bouncing back and forth like this is the US Open. He seems made of confusion. He doesn’t appear to know what to do with his hands. Clearly, like a small, despotic dictator, Patrick is unsettling the UN balance of ongoing ex-spousal relations. Hesitantly, Pete says, “Um. Do you two know each other? Patrick’s gay—I mean. Patrick? You’re gay, right? This isn’t, like. An _ex_ situation? Is it?”

“No.” Patrick looks at Bebe’s shiny red fingernails and her shiny red mouth. She looks like she rips men to shreds with her bare hands for sport. “We—Sort of? Know each other?” he begins. “It was, um. A business thing.”

“Oh,” Pete says. “What kind of business thing?”

Patrick hedges furiously. There are no things he can say that don’t make him sound summarily awful, and he doesn’t want Pete to think he’s awful. Obviously, he _is_ awful, but he’d prefer to keep that to himself for at least a little while longer. The revolution of tragic emotions playing across Pete’s face would make a character actor blush. Patrick does not want to admit, out loud, the intricacies of his relationship with Bebe.

Bebe, however, has no such concern for their vessel, and rocks the boat with tornado force.

“Patrick ripped off a company I represented to the tune of—Wait, was it forty million? Or fifty?” Bebe smiles like a hungry lioness, all shiny white teeth and bloody lipstick.

“I think—It might’ve been around that figure, yes,” Patrick confesses in a small voice. 

It was definitely fifty million. Patrick knows this, because the coup was so brilliant, so bloody, that for a few glorious months, fifty million was referred to in financial circles as ‘a Stump’. His dad was so proud he sent Patrick an engraved bottle of scotch and a Rolex. 

“Oh,” Pete says, again. “That’s—Fifty million? That’s quite a large number, isn’t it?”

“Technically, I didn’t rip anyone off,” Patrick says. It sounds pathetic, though. “Ripping off suggests I did something underhand, and I didn’t. It was a hostile takeover and I operated completely within the financial guidelines. It’s just, there was this loophole, nothing was written into the merger contract about hostile bids, and so—”

“So you took advantage of a loophole and undercut the original buyer by _fifty million dollars,”_ Bebe finishes sweetly. “Do you know what the next project I captained for that company _was,_ Patrick?”

“I have a feeling I can probably guess—"

Unperturbed, Bebe continues to say horrifying things in her lovely accent. “Lay-offs. _So many_ lay-offs. Forty-percent of their staff, in fact. Congratulations. You must be very proud.”

Patrick’s not proud. Patrick feels awful. Not because he did anything wrong, but because Bebe makes it sound like he did. It was just business; it’s not supposed to get personal, but now it _is_ personal, and in the worst possible way. Patrick would appreciate a convenient black hole, or a space between tectonic plates just big enough for a tiny hedge fund manager to slip between. The smile on Pete’s face shades from puzzled to rictus.

“Okay,” Pete says. “I’m not gonna lie, I catastrophised, like, a _bunch_ about this, and yet—this? This, I did not see coming.”

This is Patrick’s life. _Of course_ this is happening. “I should go,” he says miserably. “This is—I’m so sorry, but I should leave.”

“No,” Pete says, sounding like he only half means it. “You shouldn’t—You don’t have to leave.” 

“Instead of addressing his shortcomings, he runs away,” Bebe observes to Pete, like Patrick isn’t even in the room. She takes a meditative sip from her glass, drums her glossy nails against the stem. “Interesting. I wonder if he does the same in _all_ personal situations.”

The gauntlet sits between them. Pete offers Patrick a helpless look, a look that says he has no idea what the rules are, but Patrick’s participation in the game is crucial to their relationship remaining an ongoing arrangement. Patrick tilts his chin and takes a deep breath and reminds himself that he is wearing a six-thousand dollar suit, and people who wear six-thousand dollar suits are not intimidated by corporate lawyers. He exudes an air of staticky confidence, and slides into the booth next to Pete.

A waiter appears. “Can I get you another bottle of red? Another glass?” he asks, and Patrick might kiss him on the mouth. It’s not like anyone would think _less_ of him.

“Yes, please,” he says gratefully. “And a whisky sour. Strong. Just as an aperitif.”

In the absence of anything that could be loosely referred to as healthy coping mechanisms, Patrick drinks. He drinks like the merlot is orange juice, taking deep and miserable gulps from his glass as Pete and Bebe make easy conversation about people he doesn’t know. Patrick stares morosely at the table top and laments his terrible luck. This breeches all benchmarks of reasonableness, this is _Vince Vaugh movie_ levels of coincidence. It’s so unbelievably unfair that, out of a population of 9 million people, Patrick had to fall for the ex of the one corporate attorney he managed to publicly humiliate when he was at his youngest, his most arrogant, his most viciously desperate to prove himself at T.A.I. Holdings. Okay, he possibly pissed off more than one attorney. But still, these have to be lottery-winning odds. Pete gives his knee reassuring squeezes at regular intervals under the table but Patrick feels distinctly unsoothed. So, he drinks. He makes his way through his New York sour and most of the second bottle of wine, unaided. Jacket abandoned and tie rolled up and shoved into his pocket, he props his elbows on the table and ignores another call lighting up his phone.

It’s okay, he’ll just tell his boss he was hit by a car. At this rate, he might step out in front of one, just to improve his day with a billable ambulance ride and a soothing hospital visit.

When their main course arrives—and Patrick is an uncomfortable half hour late for his afternoon conference call—Bebe seems to remember he exists. She looks at him across the table and says, “So, Patrick. How did the two of you meet?”

Patrick pauses, mouth open, a forkful of filet mignon halfway between plate and molars. He slides a look at Pete from the corner of his eye. Pete looks back at him, another of those frozen, fearful smiles on his face. They… did not discuss this, which is stupid, because it’s such an obvious question and of course an attorney was going to ask. Cross-examination is a lifestyle choice to her.

“Uh…” Patrick says, shoving in the steak. It buys him the time it takes to chew and swallow and, seriously, it shouldn’t be this hard to think of a sweet, romantic story that doesn’t involve the words ‘your ex-husband was a slightly drunk dive bar hook-up that wouldn’t quit’. Mind terrifyingly blank, Patrick takes a fortifying swig of his wine and then blurts, “Pete! You love telling this story!”

For the record, Pete doesn’t look like he loves telling this story. He looks like he’d love to shove Patrick’s head down the toilet and flush. The reassuring knee squeeze becomes threatening, with an edge of biting finger nail. Patrick assumes a look of total innocence and takes another bite of steak.

“We met…” Pete begins, like he’s performing improv comedy. “At a… Starbucks?”

“Oh?” Bebe prompts.

“Yes,” Pete confirms, clearly warming to his lie. “We met at a Starbucks. Patrick saw me there a couple of times and started showing up every day—I didn’t notice him, not gonna lie, ow!” Patrick tucks his foot back under his seat and continues to look innocent as Pete rubs at his shin. “But he noticed me. Obviously. One morning, he had the barista write his number on my cup, paid for my coffee, even left me a note. _To the sexiest man in New York, you look super intelligent, and like you excel at sports, and you probably have a huge—”_

“Yes, I was basically stalking you,” Patrick cuts in, glaring. Another kick to the shin is not off the cards. “I write erotic soliloquies for tons of randos, don’t flatter yourself.”

“—and I called him, and we went out for pizza, and he was the most… _wonderful_ man,” Pete finishes, sliding his arm around Patrick’s shoulders. “He was smart, and funny, and so kind. So, we fell in love. And he’s a little weird, and sometimes his work priorities are kind of fucked up, but this man is so, so good for me and I’m, like. I’m _convinced_ that he’ll be good for Henri.”

Patrick stares at Pete, awed. Infused with unexpected good feeling and good food and way, _way_ more wine than is strictly advisable for a weekday lunch, Patrick suddenly _gets it._ They’re not two men attempting to smuggle Patrick past security like a poorly concealed bottle of vodka in a nightclub. They’re attempting to create a _family._ Bebe isn’t his enemy—she’s a _mother,_ a fiercely protective, ever-loving, cares-so-much-her-chest-hurts _mother._ This isn’t an interview, or a pitch meeting, or a hostile takeover. This is Pete opening his life to Patrick and inviting him inside. Patrick doesn’t have to be lonely anymore.

“Babe,” he says softly. “I—That was. Really?”

“Really,” Pete says, and kisses the tip of Patrick’s nose.

Across the booth, Bebe is—not smiling, not exactly, but her features have softened and she no longer looks like she’s thinking of unhinging her jaw and swallowing Patrick whole in defence of her only offspring.

“Yes, well,” she says, and takes another bite of her lunch, a sip from her glass. Patrick realises he’s holding his breath only because his lungs begin to burn, Pete’s hand caught in his hot and sweaty fist. “I suppose—”

On the table, Patrick’s phone vibrates again. This time, it’s not Joe’s name, it’s Will’s. Patrick’s stomach swoops in the direction of his knees at Mach 10. “I have to take this,” he says, automatically. Bebe is no longer almost-smiling. 

Pete’s fingers twist around Patrick’s with bruising force. “Patrick,” he says. “This is important.”

“I’m not—This doesn’t mean I’m not taking this seriously, I swear. It’s just—” There’s a risk the phone is going to ring out. That’s a cardinal sin. Patrick stands, scoops up his phone, and thumbs the green button in one practised motion. “Stump speaking.”

He tosses a crumpled handful of damp twenties onto the table, mouths a brief ‘I’m so sorry,’ to Pete, and heads for the door without meeting Pete’s eyes. Work pressure sits heavy on his chest and makes it harder to breathe, harder to think, harder to remember that he can be anything but the sum total of his position at T.A.I. Holdings.

Contrary to what his actions might suggest, Patrick isn’t stupid. He isn’t an idiot. He knows what this is doing to him, but like an addict, he can’t seem to stop. “Yes, Mr Beckett, I’m on my way back to the office right now. I had an appointment, that’s all,” he lies. “No, nothing important—Nothing that can’t wait.”

He hails the first cab that passes and collapses into the back seat. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, lovelies. I hope you’re all doing okay. For those who are involved with protests, or who live close to cities where they’re taking place, I hope you’re staying safe. 
> 
> Also, did I imagine it or did someone comment waaaaay back, predicting that Patrick might’ve met Pete’s ex? Congratulations! Come and collect your prize*!
> 
> (*There is no prize. Sorry.)


	17. Chapter 17

Patrick panics.

This is nothing new. Panic is the native language of the upper-level hedge fund executive. He panics his way through all of his waking hours and, like, a sizeable percentage of his sleeping ones. It’s not, usually, a big deal.

Leaving, though—Fucking hell, what was he _thinking?_

Rationally, Pete must be hurt. Probably furious, actually. Probably planning interesting methods of bloody revenge. And Patrick deserves it, because Patrick told Pete this was what he wanted, this relationship and meeting the kid and school pageants and family dinners. He said that, out loud, and then he did— _t_ _his._ Like a coward.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Patrick hurts people, with his actions and his inactions alike, not because he intends to hurt anyone, but because he’s too self-centred to _rationalise_ his hurtful behaviour while it’s happening. Isn’t that what Patrick’s ex said—That he cared about Patrick but didn’t think Patrick had the capacity to care for _him_ in the same way? That they should cut their losses and follow their hearts and find something that made them happy?

‘Something,’ he said. Not some _one_. Like he knew Patrick would never find fulfilment in a relationship. Like he was acknowledging that broken part of Patrick’s heart, the door jammed tight, nailed shut from the inside; Do Not Enter—Dead Inside.

So, Patrick sits in the back of the cab, sweating through his shirt and jacket, wondering if he should ask the driver to turn around and go back to the bistro. That’s what a normal person would do, right? God, what would he even _say_ though? What’s the script when you fuck up meeting your charming, handsome, _together_ boyfriend’s beautiful, elegant, _together_ ex-wife? Does 1-800-Flowers stock a selection of tasteful bouquets? Is there an appropriate gift on Etsy? 

Patrick presses his fingers into his temples and attempts focused visualisation techniques. Unfortunately, all he can visualise is his life falling apart. When he gets back to the office, he’ll have to face Will, as offensive and slithery as a particularly venomous snake. After that, he has to face Pete. He has to find the words to explain that no matter what he says, or what he feels, his actions will always prove that he prioritises his job. 

None of this is fair. Patrick’s life was perfect before he met Pete and now he’s expected to deal with _issues_ and _feelings._ Okay, his life wasn’t _perfect,_ but it was good enough that he didn’t question the awful parts. Fine. It was… mostly fine. Then Pete arrived and everything started going wrong. Only, that’s not true, either. Everything was wrong already, Pete just shone a light over every terrible facet of Patrick’s terrible life. It’s easy to pretend you’re not alone when the room is dark. Much harder when someone turns on the cold blue overheads. 

This _sucks,_ okay?

Patrick fumbles his phone from his pocket. One thing he’s figured out over the past three months is that, following one of his inevitable fuck-ups, it’s probably best to make contact sooner rather than later. It’s the small things, really. _I’m so sorry sweetheart,_ he types, his damp thumbs smudging the screen. He pauses and adds, _actually, I’m more than sorry. I’m an asshole. I don’t deserve you. I love you so much._

There are emails on his phone. Stock alerts and internal messages, more than any reasonable person acquires during a single lunch break. Patrick’s life is not reasonable, his job feels less like a way to make money and more like a terminal condition. He looks out of the window and sees nothing at all. Pete’s a reasonable guy, he thinks. He’s forgiven Patrick for greater transgressions in the past.

His phone vibrates in his hand. Patrick looks down. Pete’s text glows from the screen: _go fuck yourself._ Patrick gapes, astonished. The three little dots bounce and stop, and Patrick’s still reeling from the first message, barely recovered, when his phone vibrates again: _i can’t believe you ran off like that._

Then: _actually. i can totally believe you ran off like that. can’t believe i can’t believe it. here’s what i can’t believe. i can’t believe i keep giving you chances and expecting a different outcome when we both know you WON’T CHANGE._

Then: _she says i can do better by the way. my EX WIFE says i can do better. can you imagine how awful you were for her to say that?_

Then: _you’re an actual asshole, asshole. don’t text me. don’t call me. i fucking can’t with you right now._

Patrick stares at his phone—Fucking _hell._

There’s a possibility that there’s no coming back from this. That Patrick’s crossed the lines and broken through the borders and his peninsula has become an island and Patrick is marooned. Lost forever. There’s a heavy swelling in the back of his throat and Patrick realises he’s either going to barf, or cry. Which is worse, sitting in the back of a New York taxi, hurtling toward a job he hates? 

The Patrick from Before would’ve rolled his eyes and deleted Pete’s number but not the dick pic—it’s a _nice_ dick, after all—and carried on with his life. This Patrick knows he can’t let Pete slip through his fingers when they’re _thisclose_ to figuring themselves out. This Patrick knows he has to fight. 

He types with desperation sinking ice-cold through his gut: _Babe please. I’ll make it up to you, I swear!_

It's precious little, but it's all he has. He hits send. The message does not shift from delivered to read. Before he can call Pete—like a normal person would’ve done to begin with—the cab pulls up outside of the office, and Joe is calling again, and Patrick’s now over an hour late for his teleconference, and basically a decade too late to avoid taking up his place at Harvard, interning for T.A.I. Holdings, becoming so stressed he fucks strangers as a form of medication, meeting a mediocre bassist with an incredible smile, falling in love, and ultimately altering the course of the disastrous lunch. He swipes his security pass, slips into the elevator, and presses the button for the 48th floor with the enthusiasm of a man taking to the gallows.

“Where the hell have you been?” Joe hisses, as Patrick collapses into a seat in the boardroom five minutes later. Across the table, Will gives him a glare so venomous that Patrick can feel his airways closing, his heartbeat accelerating.

“It’s a long story,” Patrick mutters, and boots up his laptop. To everyone else in the room, he says, “Sorry I’m late. Family emergency. Okay, so. Can I direct your attention to slide twenty-four?”

It would be wrong to say he lies shamelessly. Patrick is very ashamed.

Patrick spends Tuesday afternoon and all of Wednesday staring at his phone, waiting for a response from Pete. It’s not like he has nothing else to do, in fact he has plenty of Wall Street busywork. The Trinity account is at a crucial point, as crucial as short-term hedge fund investments become. There’s another meeting with the shareholders to think about. He has to plan an investment presentation to attract new clients. Patrick pays no attention to any of this, because Patrick stares at his phone. 

The text to Pete doesn’t shift to read. Patrick’s calls and voicemails and emails and tweets—personal and those sent to the Clandestine twitter, Facebook, email—go unanswered. Either Pete has packed up his kid, his life, and his business and moved to the rural Midwest to realise a lifelong and hitherto unspoken dream to raise llamas, or Patrick really has FUBAR’d this whole operation.

In any other situation, Patrick would replace his emotions with billable hours. Nothing hurts when you’re working 18 hours a day. There’s no guilt, no loneliness, nothing but a dark, narrow tunnel of work, and work, and work. Usually, Patrick would let the exhaustion press into his skin, itchy and hot, like a camp blanket. Instead, Patrick stumbles into the office late on Wednesday and spends his morning looking straight through his laptop. His lunch break is an actual break, a whole hour spent sitting at one of the tables in Andy’s coffee shop, picking the poppyseeds out of a lemon muffin and staring pensively into the middle distance. His afternoon consists of writing increasingly desperate emails to Pete, none of which are acknowledged.

Patrick doesn’t do the work he knows needs to be done. Patrick’s will to work has died. At the end of the day, he leaves early—not contractually early, but 6:30, so, early for him—and picks up a two-pint carton of pistachio ice cream and a sack of biscotti the size of his head from the Italian deli near his apartment building.

The thing is, Patrick is tired of feeling nothing at all, of feeling novocaine-numb. Patrick knows now that feeling nothing means you can’t feel the joy, either, can’t feel happiness, or hope, or the tummy-tingling sureness of looking into someone else’s eyes and seeing your future. Life spiralling out of control, Patrick’s not sure if feeling all of his emotions at once is… _helpful?_ Exactly? But he knows he prefers it to feeling nothing at all. He probes this hurt like a bruise, or the scab-and-nerve-filled pocket of a tooth extraction. 

Pete doesn’t reply to Patrick’s calls, or texts, or tweets. There’s nothing on his social media. It’s like Pete never existed, and isn’t this exactly what Patrick wanted? He’s built his life on the premise of being alone and now he finds he doesn’t like feeling lonely. He’d laugh at himself if he didn’t want to cry. He eats the ice cream, scooping it out of the tub with biscotti, and keeps the TV on even though he isn’t watching it, just because the noise makes him feel less alone.

When the phone rings at nine pm, Patrick dives on it with the hungry desperation of someone seizing the last lifebelt on a sinking ship. He’s so busy thinking _Pete,_ that he doesn’t read _Dad_ and, by the time he realises, he’s already thumbed the green button, so he can’t just hang up. Patrick sighs deeply. Father-son relations aren’t as good as they could be, as good as they should be, as good as Hallmark movies and afterschool specials led Patrick to believe they _ought_ to be. It’s not that Patrick doesn’t like his dad, it’s just. It’s not that Patrick’s dad is quantifiably disappointed in him, it’s just. It’s not that Patrick inherited his dad’s ‘accumulate wealth, ask questions later’ expectations in life, _it’s just._ He makes a face at himself in the dark living room window and raises the phone to his ear.

“Dad, hey. What’s up?” he says, pasting on a fake smile. He thinks he does a pretty good job of sounding pleased to hear from him

“You’re at home?” his dad greets him. He says it with the same annoyance that most parents would reserve for, ‘You’re in jail?’ and Patrick tries not to roll his eyes.

“Yes, dad, I’m at home,” Patrick says. He mutes the TV and brushes the worst of the bisciotti crumbs from his pants. A sense of parental disapproval prickles the fine hair at the nape of Patrick’s neck, as if his dad _knows_ that Patrick’s lying on the couch in the dark, dressed in a tattoo artist’s sweater and a lake-scum layer of melted ice cream.

“So, it’s not just a rumour,” his dad says flatly. In the background, Patrick can hear his stepmother’s voice. Closer, he can hear the click of ice against glass. “You’re slacking.”

Patrick rubs the back of his neck and feels it heat under his palm. “I don’t think being at home at nine at night qualifies as _slacking,”_ Patrick says. “I think most people would say that’s, like. An expectation. A normal thing. Most people have a life outside of the office.”

_“Most people_ don’t earn seven figures,” his dad says, his voice impossible to read, which means he’s pissed off. “And _most people_ don’t have parents who paid _several_ hundred thousand dollars to help them earn seven figures.”

It’s not the worst thing his dad has ever said to him—not even top ten, if Patrick’s keeping score—but a slimy bud of irritation unfurls. “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you paid for my tuition because you could afford it and you’re, you know, my _dad,”_ Patrick says lightly. “I didn’t realise it was a loan, payable with interest.”

“I’ve never asked you for a cent of that money in return,” Patrick’s dad huffs.

“I don’t mean money, and you know it,” Patrick retorts.

They lapse into spiny, resentful silence. When Patrick was younger, sometimes his mom would tell him he was just like his dad and he’d feel proud of himself. There’s something glamorous about a dad who lives half a continent away in a beautiful penthouse apartment, at first, then an extensive residence in Boston, a dad who cuts checks at Christmas with more zeros than there are letters on your report card. As a kid, Patrick wanted to be like that with a fierceness that made his tiny chest hurt. To make his father proud. As an adult, Patrick realised she only said it when he was being kind of a jerk.

Patrick backs down. “Okay, whatever. I assume you didn’t call me just to check up on my geographical location,” he says. “If you really wanted to know _that,_ you’d probably cut to the chase and fit me up with one of those little GPS chips, like a dog. Right?”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, Patrick,” his dad sighs around a mouthful of whatever it is he’s drinking.

“You know, I was telling mom, that’s not actually the whole quote. What Wilde said, was—”

“I’m not calling you to debate the literary merit of a flamboyant Irish homosexual,” his dad cuts in. “I’m calling you about your grandmother’s will.”

Any clever response dies on Patrick’s tongue. He stops, he blinks slowly, and, with a strong sense of foreboding, he says, “Grandma’s will? I mean, um. Shouldn’t—Shouldn’t _grandma_ talk to me about this?”

And his dad says, “The funeral was last week. You’re a beneficiary, of course, so I thought you’d want to dial in to the reading next week, and we could let the accountants deal with the estate. Now, the attorney said—"

“Wait,” Patrick says. “Wait, just. Hang on a second. What do you _mean,_ ‘the funeral was last week’?”

Patrick’s dad clears his throat. His awkwardness is palpable. “Well,” he says. “It’s not like you’d have had the time to travel up to Boston, even if you’d known, so… It seemed best to deal with everything and then figure out the practicalities later.”

The internal machinations of Patrick’s chest appear to have been replaced with a couple of ice-filled water balloons. He takes a shallow breath, chokes on it, and scrambles upright on the couch.

_“'Deal with_ _everything'?"_

"The thing is—"

"Are you telling me,” Patrick projects operatically, his voice ranging all the way up into the shriek of harridans from folk tales, “that my grandmother is _dead?_ That the length of time between her death, and you telling me about it, is such that you’ve had the time to arrange, organise and _attend_ her _funeral?_ That you didn’t think it might be a good idea to _tell_ me—her grandson, your _son—_ any of this?”

“Patrick,” his dad says, the wince audible. “Please, don’t be… _difficult_ about this. You’re about to inherit a lot of money—”

“My grandma is _dead,”_ Patrick says, again, because it’s the kind of thing that’s worth repeating when this is how your father breaks the news to you. And, okay, so it’s not like Patrick knew her that well beyond the occasional summer spent in her mothy cave of an estate on the outskirts of Boston, but, still. She is— _was,_ apparently—his grandma. “My grandma died and this— _this_ is how you tell you me? What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?”

“If you’re going to use language like that, I’m going to end the call and email you the details,” his dad says archly. “Your grandmother wouldn’t have wanted this kind of… _fuss.”_

“Fuss? _Fuss?”_ Patrick is astonished by this. Astonished and hurt and completely bewildered. “Are we—Is this how you think _normal_ families behave? Are we even a family at this point? Or a collection of people with the same DNA just waiting for one or the other to die so we can take our legally-mandated ‘fair share’ of their stuff?”

“Patrick—” 

“Do Kevin and Megan know? Did you call them and invite them to a fucking… inheritance via Zoom? Jesus Christ, dad.”

“Kevin and Megan were very understanding and reasonable,” his dad says. The inflection is clear, but unspoken, that Patrick is neither of those things. “This is your problem. You’re too sensitive, just like your mother.”

“You don’t get to bring mom into this,” Patrick snaps, all the blood in his body swirling for his face. “And too sensitive? Seriously? My reaction would be ‘too sensitive’ if you’d changed the fucking wallpaper without telling me. She’s my grandma—”

“And you barely knew her!” his dad objects, as if this somehow makes it better. “It’s not like you spent a lot of time with her, and—"

Patrick, discovering new, untapped depths of hurt, begins to howl. “Because I didn’t spend a lot of time with _you,”_ he wails, aware that this makes him appear as hysterical as his dad would like to say he is. “Because you were always too busy with work when we lived in New York and when we moved to Chicago, you forgot all about us.”

He uses the plural because it hurts less than dealing with it in the first person. Us, not me. We, not I. His throat burns with barely swallowed fury. Patrick’s so fucked up, he wasn’t invited to attend his grandmother’s funeral. And, okay, yes, he barely knew her, she’s more of a shadowy idea of a stern, steel-haired lady with his dad’s eyes and a lot of objectionable opinions re: homosexuality generally. But, also, she was his _grandma,_ and he loved her—a distant and unfierce love, but love nonetheless, and Patrick is… Patrick is _sad._

Like all terrible and emotionally distant dads, Patrick’s father brings it around to his favourite topic of father-son conversation. “I paid for your education, didn’t I?”

“Is that all you’ve got?” Patrick’s mouth is filled with broken glass. “Seriously, you carry it like a shield you can use to beat off any possible suggestion that you were a shitty father. You don’t know anything about me. What’s my favourite food, dad? Was I marching band in high school, or math club? Name my last serious boyfriend. Hell, name _any_ of my boyfriends. You can’t, can you? But it doesn’t matter because you _paid for my education.”_

“I had a career,” his dad says calmly.

“You had a _family!_ Mom walked away—she walked away and she took your kids, and you didn’t give a fuck because you had a _career.”_

His dad takes an audible sip of his drink, it’s clear the emotion of the moment is making him uncomfortable. “And now you do, too. Thanks to me. You’re welcome, sport.”

He’s so assured, so certain, so convinced that his job was the only point of import in their lives, like a national landmark of Stump family history. Patrick burns with barely-checked anger. His grandma is dead and all Patrick wants to do is tell Pete, to bury his face in Pete’s soap-and-cologne scented neck and howl out the unfairness of it all. But Patrick can’t. Because Patrick has a career and he prioritised that career over Pete and, and, oh God.

Now he gets it.

It hits him like a wrecking ball to the chest, tearing through skin and splintering bone. In spite of every warning and every missed family holiday and every promise Patrick made to himself that his life would be different— _It’s not._ ‘I will never end up like him,’ Patrick swore to himself, over and over again, every time his dad didn’t call, didn’t show up. Well, here he is. He’s followed the breadcrumbs looking for something new and discovered the trail is nothing but a circle. He makes a small, wounded animal hiss between his teeth.

Patrick has hidden his fear of rejection behind his job for the past five years. There are so many walls now, his psychological trauma must resemble a hedge maze. Maybe he’ll never find the centre, but he has to try. Quietly, Patrick says, “I don’t want to end up like you. You’re sad, and you’re cold, and you’re still trying to figure out what you need to fill that hole inside you.”

His dad says, “I’m going to ignore that. You’re upset about your grandmother.”

“I’m upset about my life,” Patrick corrects. “You know what, keep grandma’s money. I don’t care about it. I’m so fucking tired of money. Add it to your collection, I’m sure it’ll make you happy.”

“Patrick, you don’t mean that. You’re upset—”

“Goodbye, dad. Thanks for the _education.”_ Patrick hits the red button and drops his head into his hands and just… breathes. Wet, swampy breaths that make his palms slick. 

In the silence that follows, Patrick assesses a couple of things: 

First, he notes, there isn’t a great and yawning sadness in his chest for his grandma. Patrick thinks most of his sadness centres on the fact that he isn’t that sad, a spidering realisation that he doesn’t know that part of his family well enough to mourn them. This is something he needs to evaluate with a professional, probably. 

Second, whatever Patrick’s going to do to try to win Pete back, it absolutely can’t involve money. Buying affection has not worked out well for him historically, and Pete doesn’t seem to care about expensive gestures anyway. Sex probably isn’t the best way to fix things, either. If Patrick wants to claim Pete’s affections, he has to give him something better than a Rolex and a blowjob. It has to come—oh, God—from the heart. 

What Patrick needs is a schedule. Because schedules have rules, and protocols, and _structure._

Patrick tosses his phone down onto the coffee table and gropes for his laptop. His fingers skid across the keys as he researches and downloads and pulls contacts into his phonebook. If he’s going to do this, he knows he has to go all-out, that he’s passed the point of half-assed apologies. This has to be huge, epic, the kind of moment worthy of the last ten minutes of a Richard Curtis movie. This is standing on the doorstep with cue cards professing love without expectation. This is showing up at the press conference. 

This is just a boy, standing in front of another boy, asking him to love him. 

This is Patrick’s last chance, and it might not work—God knows, Pete deserves better than an overworked financial executive with a thing for nice hands—but Patrick has to _try._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you're all doing okay, my lovelies. Whatever part of the world you're in, and whatever's going on for you right now. It genuinely feels like it's one thing after the next this year, but as some idiot dude once said: it's gonna get better.


	18. Chapter 18

Playing hooky in the Financial District is a two-man operation. Turns out, Patrick’s not very good at it. 

His boss thinks he’s at home sick, curled on his couch fortifying himself with chicken soup and Tylenol. Instead, Patrick’s half a block from T.A.I. Holdings, surrounded by potential witnesses. So many prospective tattletales who might say the wrong thing at the wrong business luncheon and land Patrick in hot water all the way up to his neck. Dressed for anonymity in tight jeans, sunglasses, and Pete’s leather jacket, Patrick requires a wingman to keep watch for snitches as he ducks from one building to another, his phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear.

It’s Thursday morning. It’s freezing—New York in February, go figure. Patrick regrets his decision to leave the cashmere scarf and thick wool peacoat at home. Patrick would trade the contents of his underwear for a pair of gloves. He thrusts his blue-cold fingers deep into the pocket of his jeans and flexes them against his rapidly cooling hip. Not to sound like a Midwestern mom, but how does Pete dress like this on a regular basis? Patrick is ice cold, teetering on the brink of hypothermia, and, unlike Pete, Patrick’s shirt has _sleeves._

“Look,” Patrick says into his phone. His voice is crisp as undressed salad with the business executive tone that brooks no shit. “I need a minute of her time, that’s all.”

“Yes, you said that already,” says the assistant on the other end of the line. “She’s really _very_ busy, so…"

“I know she’s very busy, but I can assure you, _I am busier.”_

The assistant hums. “Oh, I’m sorry, but she’s in a meeting right now,” they say. They say it with such cheery egregiousness, clearly not sorry _at all._ “I can take a message and ask her to get back to you, if that helps.”

Patrick grits his teeth. “I don’t have time for that,” he says. “This is very important, so if you could run along and fetch her from her meeting, that would be—it would be super. I’d be thrilled.” 

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“I mean, you _could._ What I’m hearing is you _won’t.”_

“Exactly.”

Patrick makes an irritated sound in the back of his throat, the sound that sends interns running for the relative safety of the supply closet at T.A.I. Holdings. It has no effect whatsoever on the terrible assistant, who responds with a tiny yawn. “Okay,” he says. “This is fine. When does her meeting finish? I’ll swing by the office and—”

The assistant sucks air between their teeth. _“Ooh_. No can do, I’m afraid. Ms Rexha is very definitely _appointment only.”_ Patrick looses a snarl that would not suffer transcription. The assistant continues, unperturbed, “Do _you_ have an appointment, Mr. Uh… Sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”

“Wentz,” Patrick says, compelled by some terrible instinct. “This is Mr. Wentz. Her ex-husband,” he adds, unnecessarily. “The father of her child.”

A short, startled pause, and then, “You’re—Really? Is that true? Wouldn’t you lead with that?”

They sound like they don't believe Patrick at all. Fair, truly.

Patrick huffs, irritated. “Seriously? Who would lie about something like that?”

Patrick, is the answer. Patrick would lie about something like that. Shamelessly and without remorse, apparently. So, they sit in tense silence. Not even the keyboard rattles on the other end of the line. Here, a less-skilled liar would fill the void with supposition, but Patrick is gifted—seven years in the Ivy League and five years of corporate banking hone that particular skill set—so he says nothing at all. The assistant clicks their tongue. They hum, they tap their pen against the handset, and then they break. 

“Are you _sure_ you’re Mr. Wentz?” they say suspiciously.

“Completely and absolutely,” Patrick lies. 

“Okay, fine,” says the assistant, in tones of intense human suffering. “I’ll go fetch her, Mr. Wentz.”

“Thank you so much, you’re a true professional,” Patrick says sweetly.

The assistant doesn’t reply, but the way they switch the line to hold music _feels_ aggressive. Patrick’s reflection in the nearest floor-to-skyline window shows a grin of unimaginable wickedness. Patrick keeps smiling for the two minutes and thirty-two seconds, exactly, that it takes for someone to pick up the line.

A soft, beautifully-accented, and very, _very_ irritated voice says, “Mr. Stump. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Patrick chokes—on air, or spit, or his own fucking traitorous tongue, the organ that got him into this mess in the first place. Panicked, he opens his mouth and makes a few gurgling vowel sounds that don’t pass for English, or French, or any other recorded human language. This is the problem with being an idiot who doesn’t think things through: at some point, you have to face the consequences of your actions. For Patrick, the moment of retribution is always swift, always humiliating, and always, for some reason, _surprising._

“Patrick, I am in the middle of a client meeting,” Bebe says, so acidic Patrick’s ear begins to burn. “So, just… say whatever it is you have to say, I can tell you to go away, and then we can both get on with our lives and, most importantly, our _jobs.”_

“What gave me away?” he manages to squeak.

“Oh, Patrick,” Bebe sighs, annoyed. “If my ex-husband calls me at work, he calls me on my _personal_ phone, not my office number. It’s one of the few ways Pete acts like a normal person.”

Patrick says, “Ah.”

“So, if it wasn’t Pete, who else would refer to themselves as Mr. Wentz to get my attention? ‘Ah,’ I say to myself, ‘Per’aps,’” Bebe pauses, flicking away the ‘h’ like it offends her, “‘per’aps it’s the idiot ex-boyfriend, with some kind of scheme, convinced he can use me as a silly pawn in his silly game to win back my silly ex-husband.’ Is that it?”

That is… shockingly close to the bone. Patrick winces and shuffles his numb feet inside his shoes. 

“I mean,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, “I was kind of hoping you’d hear me out and like—listen to what I have to say.”

“I don’t think you appreciate how uninteresting I find you,” Bebe says. 

Patrick’s wince doubles in its intensity, his molars cutting into the soft inside of his cheek. “Okay, that’s fair, I deserve that.”

“What do you _want,_ Patrick?”

“A minute of your time, that’s all. I just want to say sorry, face to face.”

“My time is billable in _hours,_ and I don’t have an hour to waste on a pathetic, whiny little man-child who—"

“Alright,” Patrick says, surprising himself with his bullishness. “So, let me pay you for an hour of your time. I’ll only use five minutes of it, that’s 1200-percent profit margin—Wall Street execs don’t just make offers like that, you know.”

There’s a moment of stillness on the other end of the line. Patrick waits with the wariness of a mouse, cornered by a cat. His heartbeat, breathing, firing neurons, all still.

“Go to the lobby,” she says with a sigh. “Someone will come fetch you. You have _five_ minutes, and then you’re out.”

The line goes dead before he can say thank you. 

Bebe holds a window office on a floor toward the top of Arma & Angelus LLP. One wall is made entirely of glass and chrome with views straight across Manhattan. The others are painted a soft, velvety grey, evocative of clouds, or oceans, or the thin band of the Hudson Patrick could see if he strained on his tiptoes. The size of the room is probably measurable in acres. On her wall is her diploma from Yale, but on her desk is a framed picture of Henri dressed in a Cubs shirt. Bebe herself is as terrifying as she was in Tribeca, dressed impeccably in an inky black tailored blazer and matching cigarette pants with high, high heels. Her platinum hair and blood red lipstick form striking exclamation points. Give her a cigarette and she’s Gene Tierney, Lana Turner. It’s very intimidating. 

“Sorry,” he says, as her assistant closes the door and they’re left alone, Bebe with coffee, Patrick without. It feels as dangerous as climbing into the lion enclosure dressed as a ham. “About like… all of this.”

Bebe walks to the window and looks out at the city below. “Okay, your tantrum worked, you have my attention. So, come on, out with it. Do you want to know if I think he’ll take you back if you buy him a new guitar? An SUV? An apartment?”

Every word out of Bebe’s mouth lands like a hammer blow. Is this what people think of him? Is this the impression he gives to strangers he meets for one miserable hour in exclusive bistros in Tribeca? He feels slimy with self-loathing. No wonder he’s so successful at business lunches—pond scum attracts pond scum, dragged together into a stinking mass until it chokes everything beneath it. Patrick pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes.

“I wasn’t trying to buy Pete’s forgiveness,” he says quietly. “I have a very sincere apology to offer him, too.”

Bebe turns, perches on the edge of her desk and takes a deliberate sip of her coffee. “So why are you bothering _me?”_

“Because,” Patrick pauses and sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. “Because it’s not just me and Pete, is it? It’s me and Pete, and Henri, and… you. So, I can’t apologise to him if I don’t apologise to you.”

“But it’s not you and Pete, is it? He dumped you,” Bebe says, her tone as sharp as the heels of her Louboutins. “This is just you, standing in my office, asking me to forgive you for something that has nothing to do with me.”

Patrick’s chest hurts. “I mean—It’s like. We haven’t really _discussed_ breaking up in any sort of depth. It’s more of a theory, really.”

“So is gravity, and yet here we are, _not_ floating off into space,” Bebe says, eyeing Patrick over the rim of her cup. “He said this was the last time you’d put your job ahead of everything else in your life. It seemed to me that this wasn’t the first time you’d done something like this. He sounded fairly convinced that he was making the right decision.” 

Patrick knows she’s right. He’s a cancer, sticky with rot that can’t be cut out, unresponsive to treatment. Instead of interrupting, or arguing, or saying something in defence of his indefensible _awfulness,_ Patrick says in a small voice, “I know I shouldn’t ask for your forgiveness, and, like, God knows, I’m the last person you should allow near your son—Not that I’m, you know, a _danger_ to him or anything! God! No, I didn’t mean… I’m just a common or garden fuck up, nothing sinister, I swear.”

Bebe rolls her eyes. “Please. I know you’re not a physical threat to Henri.”

“Oh, good,” Patrick beams. 

“You’re an _emotional_ threat.”

Patrick stops beaming and considers this with his head tipped to one side. He deflates like a balloon. “Oh, that’s. That’s _less_ good.”

“I know you,” Bebe continues, “not you personally, but men like you. I know you’ll prioritise your job, even when it’s killing you. I know you’ll hurt Pete, which is none of my concern, but, by extension, you’ll hurt Henri, which _is._ You’ll do it without meaning to. Over and over again, in so many tiny, insignificant ways it doesn’t seem to matter. What’s a missed parent-teacher night in the grand scheme of things? Does one Christmas pageant really make a difference? It’s just a birthday party—there’ll be another next year. But it’s like a paper cut, Patrick—one doesn’t make you bleed out, but a thousand? Ten thousand? How many tiny ways will you hurt them before you go too far?” 

Patrick’s chest hurts with the painful truth of it. Bebe says, “You mean well, and I’m sure you love Pete in your own way, but—”

“I quit my job,” Patrick vomits up, before he can stop himself. 

“What?” Bebe looks at him in surprise. A sentiment Patrick’s sure he returns tenfold: no one in Manhattan is more surprised than Patrick right now. She examines his face for fault lines like he’s a witness in a particularly difficult case. “You did?” she adds doubtfully. 

This is where a normal person would laugh and brush it off as a badly-timed joke, but there’s a look of hesitant admiration on Bebe’s face, like she thinks he might not be a write-off after all, and Patrick wants to preserve that expression in amber. Also, he has never been described by anyone as a normal person. He can think of a way to cover up the lie later. He _wants_ to quit, after all, and isn’t that almost as good as actually quitting? It’s totally on his to-do list. He _will_ quit at some point; does it matter if it’s today or next week or three years on Monday? The _intention_ is there. This is semantics, nothing more, nothing less. 

“Yes,” says Patrick’s ridiculous, lying mouth. “Fuck that place, I quit yesterday.” 

Internally, Patrick is calculating how many personal days he has available, how many days he can use consecutively, how long he needs to _pretend_ to be unemployed before his lie becomes a mortgage-defaulting reality. He observes his unforgivably stupid plan from outside of his own skin, like someone in one of those documentaries about near death experiences. Instead of a white light, Patrick approaches a brick wall, a lake of sulphur, a terrible, raging dumpster fire of his own ridiculous creation, at warp speed. Externally, Patrick smiles vaguely, panicked around the eyes. 

“Well,” Bebe says. Then, “Well. I didn’t think you’d go _that_ far, but okay. I thought maybe you’d reduce your hours, or something.”

“Yes,” Patrick says weakly. “That probably would’ve made more sense, wouldn’t it?”

“But, this? This is excellent! This is… beyond my expectations, Pete’s going to be thrilled.” 

“I quit my job, I absolutely quit my job,” he shrills, like counting off beads on the rosary. “I’m sorry I messed up, but I _quit my job.”_

Bebe grins with all of her teeth, a happy tigress. “Okay. Okay, fine, I take it back. Maybe you’re not as awful as I thought.”

Patrick breathes heavily through his nose. “Hnngh,” he says.

Patrick is exceptionally talented at hedge fund management, he can make a passable nigiri roll, and he knows exactly how to pair a suit with a tie, and shoes, and cufflinks. He hopes, somewhere in the dark depths of his untapped life skills, he has the ability to deal with this.

Hurtling across Brooklyn Bridge in a 2011 Civic, Patrick panics. He wishes he had a plan. Or even, like, the basic outline of a plan beyond ‘show up at Pete’s place of business and adlib the dialogue.’ It’s not like he has any other option, though. It’s not like this test is multiple choice, and Pete’s clearly hellbent on pretending Patrick doesn’t exist in the digital realm. So: physical confrontation. Which, honestly, is Patrick’s least favourite kind of confrontation. He silently debates the pros and cons of ralphing all over the upholstery.

Undeterred, the Honda surges onward, and Patrick, compelled by the laws of periodic motion and the guidelines of Uber, goes with it. They barrel toward Williamsburg and Clandestine Tattoos and Patrick’s Big Moment. He has no idea what he’s going to say. Outside of a boardroom, he never does. He’s hoping for a moment of divine intervention, that he’ll see Pete and know _exactly_ what to say, that he’ll sound sincere and sensible and boyfriendish and Pete will forgive him. For a realist, he’s very optimistic. More likely, he’ll see Pete and forget how to talk, think, breathe.

In lieu of a paper bag, Patrick practises deep breathing techniques into his cupped palms. His pits and back are greasy with a film of cold, panicky sweat. Patrick smells his own sour terror every time he shifts on the backseat. He grips the case between his knees with a little more vigour—at least he doesn’t have to talk until he’s done with the first part of his plan.

If the first part of his plan doesn’t end with him keeling over in cardiac arrest, that is.

They approach the tattoo shop, Patrick and the driver, and Patricks heart accelerates in an equal-but-opposite reaction to the car slowing down. Somehow, Patrick is thanking the driver. Somehow, Patrick is falling out of the car clutching a bouquet of hyacinths in lush shades of violet and amethyst in one hand, a guitar case in the other. Somehow, Patrick is kneeling on the frozen pavement, unclasping the case with shaking hands and lifting out the black acoustic. He shrugs the strap over his shoulder, he fumbles for a pick, someone trips over him and calls him an asshole. Juggling guitar, case, flowers is harder than it looks. This seemed like _such a good idea_ in the safety of his dark apartment. 

His throat filled with his heartbeat, Patrick pushes open the door, his sweaty palm slipping against the wood. The bell rings. Patrick moves forward, compelled by fear and hubris in equal measure. Gabe’s eyes flick toward him from the front desk without much interest. Then, he performs a double-take so dramatic, Patrick almost bolts. Only the physical difficulty of executing a 180-degree spin with a full-size acoustic guitar strapped to his chest without wedging himself in the doorway stops him. Gabe begins to grin, then Gabe begins to laugh. If Pete isn’t at work today, Patrick will quit the country, possibly die.

“Oh. My god,” Gabe says. “This is— _Pete!_ He showed up! But, like. _Armed.”_

Patrick has to close his eyes against the rush of every red blood cell in his body relocating to his face. He can _feel_ his blood pressure rise. Behind the thin, pink shield of his eyelids, over the roar of his pulse in his ears, he’s aware of a door opening, of Pete saying, “What the fuck?” and, before he can change his mind, or freeze, or pass out, Patrick opens his eyes and meets Pete’s startled brown gaze. He stomps forward three steps, flowers held at chest height, and thrusts the bouquet into Pete’s arms. Pete’s hand closes around the stems. He looks down at the flowers, eyes wide, then up at Patrick. His mouth opens, then closes again.

“These are for you,” Patrick says, shrill. He’s not sure if Pete doesn’t drop them because he’s charmed, or because no one has ever walked into his tattoo shop and attacked him with flowers before, but, either way, Patrick’s claiming it as a victory.

Pete says, “Oh,” his mouth a soft round. He doesn’t move, or say anything else, he just stands there and looks _handsome_ and _lovely._ Patrick glares at Gabe, a look he hopes conveys exactly how much he’d like Gabe to find someplace else to be, preferably in the Arctic Archipelago. Gabe smiles back beatifically and lifts his phone, clearly filming the whole event. Patrick’s scowl intensifies—is it possible to beat someone to death with an acoustic guitar and, if so, is it wise to do it on camera?—and Gabe responds with an enthusiastic thumbs up. “Don’t mind me,” Gabe says. 

“Okay, so,” Patrick croaks, and licks his dry lips. “This is my grand gesture.”

This—playing guitar, singing, performing—isn’t a thing he’s done since high school, not with any kind of regularity. Didn’t have time, didn’t see the point, didn’t want to waste precious stressing-about-work time with pointless recreational pastimes. Once upon a time, Patrick thought he might like to be in a band. Then college happened, and every reason he came up with _not_ to touch his guitar seemed recorded in his dad’s most disapproving voice. 

He’s practised this song precisely twice, at two in the morning, and he doesn’t think he’s very good. Patrick is hot with embarrassment, and not the fun kind of hot. The kind that threatens to burst the plump, blood-rich veins at his temples. The kind that leads to Notable Medical Incidents.

Patrick takes a deep breath and, just to put off the impending stroke, or else hurry it along, he opens his mouth and begins to strum, “Shed a tear ‘cause I’m missing you, I’m still alright to smile, I think about you every day now.”

He makes his inelegant way through two verses and refrains of Patience without major musical incident. It’s a performance his high school music teacher might’ve referred to as ‘reasonably competent.’ He maybe even starts to get into it a little toward the end, and attempts some kind of sexy, snakey hip thing behind the guitar, like an 80s rock star. He tells himself, eyes closed, that it’s less about his musical ability and more about his intention. He hopes Pete remembers that horrible cover of Rocket Queen the first night they met, the filthy smile he shot Patrick across the bar. Guns N Roses is their thing. They’re bonded by Axl Rose.

Yeah, Patrick’s not thrilled about it, either.

When he finishes, he opens his eyes. Pete is just sort of… staring at him. “Patrick,” Pete says hoarsely. “What—What the fuck?” 

“Um,” Patrick says. He rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, so. I’m sorry, but I can’t play the solo.”

Dazed, Pete says, “Uh. No. That’s okay.”

“This is going on TikTok,” Gabe says gleefully.

“Fuck you,” Patrick snaps.

Pete glares at Gabe. “Why are you still here?”

“I’m contractually obliged,” Gabe replies. “Remember?”

“Could you _not_ be here?” Pete says. He’s still clutching the hyacinths, Patrick hopes this is a good sign. “Like, could you find somewhere else to be that’s _not_ here?”

“Dude,” Gabe says, looking hurt. “Gabes before babes!”

 _“Thank you,”_ Patrick says, to Pete.

Gabe holds out the phone, “But look at his _face!_ Look at the fear in his eyes and tell me it won’t go viral.”

Patrick’s affront is large enough to eclipse the Empire State Building. “You know what? I will _sue you_ if my emotional transparency finds its way onto social media. You are a _douchebag—”_

“Still recording, Twinkzilla.”

“Suck it, dickwad. You can eat my _entire_ ass—"

“Knock it off!” Pete roars. Patrick and Gabe fall silent. “Can everyone who’s name isn’t on the licensing form, _leave_ the fucking building, _please?”_

Patrick’s heart sinks to his knees. “Oh,” he says. “I—Yeah. Just, I’ll go—”

“Not you,” Pete says, glaring at Patrick with a fury he probably deserves. “You can stay. Not because I’m, like, _happy_ with you, oh no, I am so very fucking _angry_ with you. So… don’t relax, or anything.”

Patrick has never relaxed in his adult life, not even once. This direction is an easy one to follow. He stands to one side, twisting his hands into his guitar strap, as Gabe gathers his coat and his hat and his wallet and he doesn’t even have it in him to offer Gabe a smug smile as he stomps out of the shop. 

Pete sets the flowers down on the counter with a gentleness that surprises Patrick, and locks the door behind Gabe. He leans back against the wood, eyes closed, and grits out between his teeth, “Are you ever going to give me the chance to get over you? Or is this my life now? Should I just resign myself to writing down all the reasons you’re terrible for me and then have you show up with a _guitar,_ looking like George fucking Michael circa 1987?”

Patrick has no idea what to say to _that._ On an academic level, he understood that Pete no longer wanted to be with him, but, like, he assumed this was on a temporary basis. A break, not a break _up._ He twists his thumb through a loop of the strap and stares at his shoes.

“Do you want me to leave?” Patrick asks. 

“No,” Pete says, sighing. “I mean, yes, but also no. I don’t know. I’m so—I’m confused. And you just showed up and sang a Guns N Roses song, like an _angel,_ and. Yeah. I don’t know. This is a lot.”

Patrick perks up. “Did you think it was okay? I was a little unsure about it around the second verse, but…”

“Yes, Patrick. You’re a natural. God.” Pete rolls his eyes and collapses onto the couch in the waiting area. He tips his head back and closes his eyes, like looking at Patrick is a physical weight he can no longer bear.

“I apologised to Bebe,” Patrick says quietly.

Pete’s eyes open and meet with Patrick’s with a startling intensity. “You did what now?”

Patrick lifts one shoulder. “Yeah. I went to her office this morning. It’s hard to tell with all that French attitude, but I think she maybe doesn’t hate me anymore. I…” Patrick swallows heavily. “My grandma died. Like, long enough ago that they held the funeral, but my dad told me last night and, like. Yeah.”

“Fuck. I’m so sorry,” Pete says, looking stricken. 

“Please, don’t think I’m begging for sympathy, because I’m not. We weren’t close, it’s like. It’s sad. I’m sad. But that’s not why I’m here. It just made me realise—I don’t want to end up like that, you know? I want to end up with _you.”_

Pete swallows and passes a hand over his eyes. 

“I’ve spent the past forty-eight hours convincing myself I don’t need you.” he says. “It’s _so hard._ Like going cold turkey, which means I’m addicted to you, and medical professionals don’t call it an addiction if the source is a _good_ thing, do they? Like, no one says, ‘Oh, Pete? He’s addicted to chewable daily multivitamins, it’s so sad.’ So, yeah. If I’m addicted, you’re bad for me, right?”

Patrick looks at him, startled, because Patrick… Patrick doesn’t think of it that way. It’s so hard to put it into words, but he clears his throat, and he tries. “I mean, endorphins are addictive, and they’re triggered by, like. _Yoga,_ and _jogging,_ and _orgasms,_ and _no one_ thinks orgasms are a bad thing. Maybe—maybe I’m that kind of addiction. Did you think about that?”

Pete climbs to his feet and steps toward the door and says, “Patrick,” all exasperated and irritated and Patrick _can’t_ let him turn this into something ugly. Patrick just sang _Patience,_ for fuck’s sake, and Gabe’s probably uploading it to Twitter _right now_ and Patrick’s going to feature as a laugh piece on The Tonight Show. 

So, when Pete frowns and opens his mouth to say something else, Patrick acts without thinking about the consequences too much. Who needs consequences when you have poorly executed, barely thought-out half-plans?

“I quit my job!” Patrick shrieks. 

Pete looks at him in shock. He collapses back onto the couch and stares at Patrick like he just socked him in the stomach. “Excuse me?”

“I... quit my job?” Patrick says, again. It sounds no less ludicrous, no matter how many times he says it out loud.

Pete's eyes narrow. “No you didn’t.”

“Yes I did!” Patrick lies with such indignance. 

“Fuck,” Pete says, his voice raw. “I—Wow. This is. That’s, um. Really?”

“I quit my job,” Patrick says, apparently not at full stupid capacity for one day. He hopes the tremble in his voice doesn’t give him away. “I quit my job _for you._ So, yeah. Maybe we should talk.”

Pete blinks at Patrick from the couch, his mouth moving without sound. He looks utterly shell shocked. Patrick stands perfectly still, as if the slightest twitch of his shoulders, a flutter of his eyelids might shatter the fragility of the moment. From this distance, Pete might as well occupy a different continental landmass. Then, Pete starts to smile. 

“Fuck, Patrick,” he says, stretching out his arms. “Get the fuck over here, you.”

Patrick smiles back, feeling drugged, but better, because no drug marketed has ever felt like this, like his blood is molten honey, like he’s breathing sunshine. He collapses to straddle Pete’s lap and frames Pete’s smile with both hands. His mouth dips toward Pete’s, compelled by some magnetic force. Pete’s mouth tastes sweeter than Patrick remembers, his lips softer, his hands snaking under Patrick’s jacket and shirt warmer, rougher, better. This is a terrible idea—obviously it’s a terrible idea, it’s _Patrick’s_ idea—but Patrick will deal with it later, tomorrow maybe, when Pete’s not sucking on Patrick’s tongue and doing interesting things with the heel of his hand against Patrick’s zipper. For now, Patrick allows himself to be thoroughly kissed. 


	19. Chapter 19

There are many words that describe William Beckett. Words like capable and impeccable and cunning and terrifying. Everything about him is sharp and shark-like from his dark little eyes to his dangerous, razorwire smile. Today, his suit is a three-piece in fawny tweed, cut beautifully, worn with a sky-blue shirt and navy tie with a sleek silver tie pin and engraved antique cufflinks. It turns out, the devil doesn’t wear Prada, but only because the devil wouldn’t be seen  _ dead _ in something available off the rack.

Patrick, feeling shabby in a Savile Row suit that cost more than a second-hand car, takes a long pull from his third coffee of the meeting. Exhaustion fuzzes through him like Alka-Seltzer. There’s a possibility he may forego the cup for number four and just slug it straight from the pot. Chronologically, sex on the couch—good sex, too, sweaty, desperate, fingernails-biting-into-hips, mind-altering, body-fusing, fuck-until-the-ache stops make-up sex—in Pete’s studio was less than a week ago. Emotionally, it feels like several lightyears.

“I’m not sure,” says the company executive Will has cornered behind the table, a cat with a mouse. “We’re not in a position to dump fifteen-percent of our assets into a mid-term investment. If it backfired…”

“Mr. Walker, please,” Will soothes. It’s clearly not a disposition that comes naturally. “We would  _ never  _ ask a client to put their capital at risk. T.A.I. Holdings is a family business, and we see our investors as members of that family. And families support one another, isn’t that right, Patrick?”

“Hmm?” Patrick murmurs into his cup. Will’s glare is sharp, and so is the wingtip Joe buries in Patrick’s shin. Patrick bolts upright and sloshes coffee on his cuff. “Yes, absolutely, Mr. Beckett. Just like a family. I, um, I have the figures, if you’d like to give them a once-over. Very promising. Lots of scope for mid-term gain if it’s invested correctly.”

And scope for T.A.I. to make a handsome profit if it’s invested  _ in _ correctly.

Patrick checks his notes—Mr. Walker, CEO of SP Ltd, a relatively successful newcomer to the clean energy market. They’ve grown from a Midwestern start-up to a household name in less than a decade and they’ve done it all without a single accusation of financial misdealing or terrible employee relations. There’s a possibility they might actually be Good People. God, Patrick  _ hates  _ fucking over the ethical companies, which means he’s losing his edge since fucking over the etchical companies is always  _ so easy. _

“I understand that,” says Walker. “It’s just, if it  _ doesn’t  _ pay off, what then? It’s a lot to lose on a gamble, a lot of livelihoods on the line. I’m only really interested in…”

Patrick stops listening. Not because he doesn’t want to listen, but because listening makes him feel complicit in this company’s inevitable downfall. Instead, he props his chin on his fist and concentrates on opening his eyes after every migraine-coloured blink. He arrived at the office at 5 this morning. His eyelids feel like hot sandpaper.

Patrick did not think this plan through before he embarked upon it. This is because Patrick is reckless and impulsive and assumes he’s far, far cleverer than he actually is. Patrick figured he could carry on working at his current dizzying pace and just… fit his ‘unemployment’ into the hours he previously reserved for sleeping. So, instead of working late, Patrick would work early—get to the office at some ungodly hour of the pre-dawn and work a solid fourteen hours, clock off at 7,  _ after _ Will leaves the office, and get home in time for Pete to call once Henri’s asleep. Catch up on anything he missed for a couple of hours after midnight, snatch a cat nap, then begin the whole cycle again. No big deal. There are plenty of studies backed up with scientific data that make it clear seven-hours-a-night isn’t a medical necessity. This is Wall Street, after all. 

Without warning, Patrick yawns.

It’s staggering in its intensity, not a regular common or garden variety yawn. That would be bad enough, honestly. But, no. Patrick’s life is not that straightforward. It’s one of those jaw-cracking, face-breaking, unhinge at the corners and swallow the exhaustion whole like a  _ snake _ kind of yawns. He makes the accompanying noise, you know. The  _ ‘ughhhuhhhyurghhhh’ _ of a  _ really satisfying yawn,  _ and his face probably looks like a shrink-wrapped toilet bowl, and it shouldn’t matter because he’s yawning, and yawning is totally natural, and he’s operating on the assumption that no one else is going to  _ watch  _ him yawn, and then...

“Patrick,” Will barks. He sounds irritated, like this isn’t his first attempt to get Patrick’s attention.

Patrick looks up slowly. “Sorry, what was that?” he says, which is inviting trouble, but it’s that or  _ guess _ what Will wants.

“The  _ figures,  _ Patrick,” Will says icily.

“Oh,” Patrick says, fumbling through the portfolio on the desk in front of him. “Just a second, I have them right here—”

With the kind of bad timing Patrick’s begun to think of as inevitable, his phone begins to vibrate on the tabletop. 

It’s Pete. Lovely Pete who thinks Patrick’s all alone in his apartment, jobless and aimless with nothing to do but answer calls.

Every nerve and synapse in Patrick’s body calcifies. He goes entirely still. Next to him, Joe does the same. Will glares with force and Patrick thinks, ironically, that he’s about to get fired anyway, so he thinks ‘fuck it’ and opens his mouth and says, “Um, that’s my fiancé, he wouldn’t call unless it was an emergency, ” and Will looks suitably  _ outraged,  _ because Will probably  _ knows _ Patrick doesn’t  _ have _ a fiancé but, what’s he going to do? Call him out in front of this prospective client, when he just spent an hour feeding him utter horseshit about their corporate ‘family’?

Mr. Walker looks between the two of them and then down at the phone. The phone continues to vibrate with cheery disregard for Patrick’s employment status or cardiac health. 

“You should probably take that,” he says mildly.

“Um,” Patrick says. He doesn’t dare look at Will.

“Take the call,” Will says, his voice syrupy sweet.

Dismissed, Patrick grabs the phone from the desk and power walks to the nearest—and nicest—executive bathroom and thumbs the green button.

Breathless, and locked in a stall, Patrick says, “Babe. Hi.” 

Pete doesn’t reply for long enough that Patrick has to check the call hasn’t disconnected. It hasn’t, Pete’s name is still there. Then, Patrick starts to panic that Pete’s called him in the middle of, like, a choking fit or something and Patrick’s just  _ standing here _ listening to his boyfriend  _ asphyxiate _ and  _ what the hell, Patrick— _

“Pete? Oh my God, are you choking?” he barks into the phone. “Wheeze once for yes, twice for no.”

“Dude,” Pete says, sounding puzzled. “No? Why would I call you if I was choking? Why would I call you if  _ anyone _ was choking?”

Patrick’s heartbeat slows marginally. “Okay, not choking. Not choking is good. But, like… why are you calling me?”

“Shh,” Pete says, and Patrick does shush, but only because he’s very confused. After a moment or two, Pete, resident weirdo, says, “D’you hear that?”

Patrick listens, head cocked to one side. There’s no sound on the line whatsoever. “I don’t hear anything,” Patrick says at length. “Are you okay?”

“Of course you don’t hear anything,” Pete says. “It’s the sound of silence, my friend.  _ You’re _ not at work—” Patrick compels the bathroom door to remain closed with Professor X force of will “ _ — _ and  _ I’m _ my own boss, which means I can leave work whenever I want. It’s a beautiful equation, Wall Street.”

Patrick squints at the toilet paper dispenser. “I don’t think I get it…”

“You have a lot of free time on your hands,” Pete purrs.

What Patrick  _ has _ is a lot of work on his desk. “Um?”

“I’m just saying. Would you like me to put  _ something else _ in your hands?”

Patrick’s penis gets the message before his brain does. This is because Patrick is in the middle of an aggressive, multi-million-dollar pitch and his brain is in work mode, whereas his genitals are basically always happy to bring the conversation around to _them._ Patrick would like, very much, to fill his hands with whichever body parts Pete has in mind. In this weird, not-quite-business, not-quite-pleasure limbo, Patrick almost blurts out, ‘But I’m at work,’ and saves himself only by biting into his tongue so hard he yelps.

“Fuck, babe, if I can make you moan for me just by talking about it…” Pete trails off with audible eyebrow waggle. “I can’t stop thinking about the things I want to do to you,” he continues, his voice low with gut-humming want. “I thought maybe you could show me your toy collection—a little grown-ups only show and tell?”

“Um,” Patrick says unsexily. “Don’t you have to pick up Henri soon?” 

“Bebe’s picking him up tonight. I’m all yours.”

Patrick thinks of Will in the boardroom. “Oh. Right. Yeah. That—that sounds awesome...”

Pete snaps, “Okay, forget it. I just thought it might be fun, that’s all. It’s fine, you can—”

And he sounds so disappointed, Patrick has to interrupt. “What? Fuck you! You’re just gonna get my hopes up like that and leave me hanging?”

Pete laughs, a noise that might as well be directed to Patrick’s penis, given the way it perks in response. “I’m hoping I can get other things up, if you know what I mean,” he says. 

“I’m holding you to that.”

“Mm, you can hold me to anything you want. I’m leaving now, so. See you soon, ‘kay? Love you.”

“Yeah, love you too.”

Patrick hangs up and then bangs his head against the bathroom door, basically vibrating with anxiety. Okay. Alright, this is  _ fine. _ Patrick is an intelligent and resourceful individual. All his professors at college agreed, even if what they  _ meant _ was sneaky and devious. He’s talked his way out of worse.

Apparently the kind of person who leaves his office mid-afternoon for hot sex with his hot boyfriend, he leaves the building typing an email to Joe with one hand, waving down a cab with the other.  _ Sorry,  _ he writes, collapsing onto the back seat,  _ Pete’s kid barfed everywhere. Said I’d pick up clean clothes from his place and meet him at the school. Gonna have to sit out the rest of the meeting. Email me the figures and I’ll take a look at them later. P.  _ Patrick closes his eyes and rests his hot temple against the cool cab window. He assumes there’s a circle in Hell reserved for people who lie about the medical history of other people’s children. 

Joe sends back a gif of Augustus Gloop after he’s fallen into the chocolate river, along with a string of barfing emojis, so Patrick figures he’s in the clear. 

When Pete arrives at Patrick’s apartment, Patrick is stretched out on his bed in his nicest boxer briefs. Pete eyes him hungrily from the bedroom door, his lower lip sucked between his teeth. This is  _ so much better _ than an afternoon wasted in an airless boardroom. Patrick gives his dick an exaggerated squeeze and watches Pete watching the damp patch blot the grey fabric just above the head. 

“Hi,” Patrick says, breathless, “Want to give me a hand with this?” 

Pete’s eyes light up like it’s Christmas morning. “Fuck yeah I do,” he says. “God. You’re just—Fuck, Patrick.”

Pete peels his shirt off with both hands over his head and tosses it onto Patrick’s discarded sweatpants by the bed. Sweatpants Patrick threw down because unemployed men don’t lie on the couch wearing Savile Row suits, and Patrick is an accomplished and careful liar. In the rosy mid-afternoon light, Pete’s skin glows. Patrick wants to trace his tattoos with his fingers, his lips, his tongue. Pete shoves down his jeans and frees his fat, red dick—no underwear, obviously—and kneels on the edge of the mattress, his face a study of flat-mouthed seriousness. Pete strokes his blood-dark cock and watches Patrick with those endless amber eyes. He’s the most beautiful man Patrick’s ever touched, despite a long and debauched history of touching. Patrick could spend a lifetime stroking his thumbs over the defined knives of Pete’s cheekbones, learning the exact angles of the trellis of Pete’s ribcage, finding new points of interest and nerve-filled landmarks. He would never,  _ could never, _ grow tired of mapping the topography of Pete Wentz.

Sweating already, Patrick crosses his wrists above his head arches his hips. Pete walks closer on his knees and rubs a molten hot hand from Patrick’s knee to his hip, against the grain of the hair. He stops just short of Patrick’s groin, pulling up Patrick’s shorts as he goes, his thumb grazing the golden-brown edge of Patrick’s pubic hair. His breathing is quick, excited, his cock already crowned with thick pearls of creamy pre-come. Patrick’s mouth waters.

“I love your cock,” Patrick whispers. He reaches out a hand and rests it against Pete’s thigh. Pete is shaking, the muscle rioting under his skin as Patrick turns his head and kisses the crease of Pete’s groin, feels the soft scratch of dark hair under his lips. Patrick looks up through his lashes and meets Pete’s eyes. “Can I?”

Pete swallows hard. “Yeah,” he says hoarsely, “Fuck, like— _ Yeah.” _

Pete cups Patrick’s jaw and guides his cock into Patrick’s mouth and down his throat. He rolls his hips in slow, sure motions that make Patrick’s eyes water. Pete gets his hand around Patrick’s cock and strokes as Patrick sucks Pete’s dick like he’s starving for it. Pete leaks on Patrick’s tongue, wet and sticky and Patrick’s whole body is made of shattered glass.

Pete makes a soft, desperate sound and twists his fingers into Patrick’s hair. He pulls Patrick back then leans down and kisses him hard and sure. His sharp teeth nick the tender edge of Patrick’s lower lip and Patrick moans like the whole universe is contained in Pete’s mouth.

Pete groans, “I want to fuck you ‘til you forget your name, beautiful,” and three heartbeats later, Patrick is naked but for his boxers trailing off one ankle, flat on his stomach with Pete straddling his hips and reaching for the lube. There’s a pause as he touches the crease of Patrick’s ass. Patrick keens and stuffs his mouth full of his own knuckles.

“Yeah?” Pete says, like he always does, his dick thick and hot against Patrick’s thigh.

Patrick smiles into his folded arms and pushes his hips back. “Yeah,” he says fondly.

Pete opens him slowly, one finger, then two. The way he avoids Patrick’s prostate feels deliberate, his thumb slowly tracing where Patrick is held open and quivering with nerve and need. He knows Pete’s looking, watching Patrick fuck himself on Pete’s fingers with shallow rolls of his hips. It makes Patrick itchy and embarrassed and hot in the good way. Pete sucks a tender bruise to Patrick’s shoulder blade. 

“You look so fucking gorgeous like this,” he murmurs into the sweaty hair behind Patrick’s ear. 

Patrick smirks over his shoulder. “Are there times I’m  _ not _ fucking gorgeous?”

Pete hums and laughs and scrapes his fingernails over Patrick’s sides.  _ “Extra _ fucking gorgeous,” he clarifies. “You have to let me film this sometime.”

Blood floods Patrick’s cock in a pleasure-pain throb. “Yeah?” he breathes. “Want a little something-something for the spank bank, huh?”

Pete huffs a laugh through his nose. “Show-off,” he says, his breath damp against Patrick’s ear.

“You love it,” Patrick says. “Now fuck me.”

Pete holds Patrick open as he slides inside, digs down between Patrick’s cheeks and presses in two fingers as he slides in his cock. The extra stretch burns pleasantly, leaves Patrick feeling full down to his fingertips, his mouth wet with urgent drool. Pete knows what he needs, which is remarkable, because Patrick can barely figure that out for himself. Patrick falls boneless into the sheets and stops trying to sound sexy. Just… lets himself make as many ridiculous noises as he needs to as Pete fucks him gently, mouthing at the nape of Patrick’s neck, so slow and shallow it borders on unsatisfying. Patrick twists his hands into the sheets and grinds his hips into the mattress. He needs Pete deeper, harder, needs Pete to find that tingling spot inside of him that makes him cry out. Pete laughs against Patrick’s ear, hoarse and breathless.

“Something wrong?” he teases, sliding his hand under Patrick’s chest to pluck at his nipple.

Patrick snarls and spits out the mouthful of duvet he has clamped between his teeth. “Are you fucking me or not?”

Without warning, Pete shoves his hips forward and slides into Patrick hard and fast and full and  _ gorgeous.  _ Patrick chokes and Pete thrusts, deep and perfect. “You want it like this?” he whispers, his teeth sinking into Patrick’s shoulder, and Patrick’s eyes roll back. “You want me to fuck you hard and fast?”

“Fuck,  _ yes,”  _ Patrick slurs, his toes curling against the mattress. Pete keeps up the pace, one hand curling around Patrick’s dick and tugging in time. Patrick drops his face into the mattress and hands himself over to Pete’s touch and Pete’s skin and Pete’s mouth on his neck. “I’m gonna come,” Patrick whines, that familiar slow-good pressure building low in his groin. “Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck, I’m gonna—Nngh!”

Pete hums, disagreeable, and pulls out. Patrick’s erection jumps, trapped between the bed and his belly. He moves to get a hand underneath himself, but Pete is faster and pins him with both wrists over his head. Patrick passes though all five stages of grief in a single, fluttering heartbeat. “What the  _ fuck?”  _ he snaps. “You total asshole— _ Fuck!” _

Pete laughs, low and breathy, and rubs his dick over Patrick’s hole.

“What’s the rush? We have all day,” Pete points out, and Patrick’s so annoyed, so sex-addled, that he almost barks out that he  _ has to get back to work, _ but then Pete slides back inside of him and starts to thrust, slow and lazy but deep, refusing to follow a rhythm, speeding up and slowing down and pulling Patrick closer and closer until…

In the brief, white lightning bolt before Patrick comes all over his high thread count sheets, Pete pulls out again. He spends a few minutes fingering Patrick lazily, pinning his hips so Patrick can’t rub off against the mattress like a teenager. Then he sinks inside and doesn’t move at all, presses and holds and strokes Patrick off with slow pulls of his hand until Patrick’s soclose, soclose to glorious, shattering completion and then. Well. Then he pulls out again. Because he’s a  _ douchebag.  _ Patrick’s whine is undignified. 

Again, and again, and again. Pete fucks him in so many wonderful ways but stops just before Patrick can let go. Horny, and exhausted, and on the brink of bawling his eyes out, Patrick twists his fingers into the sheets as Pete, once again, pulls out and leaves him empty and clenching around nothing. When he cranes his neck to glare at Pete, Pete’s eyes twinkle with merriment, his smirk knowing. 

“Something wrong?” Pete asks, casually slipping his thumb into Patrick, ghosting over his prostate.

Patrick snarls, furious. “This game,” he tells Pete, irritated, “is not fun.”

Pete squeezes Patrick’s throbbing dick. “Looks like parts of you enjoy it plenty,” he says. With his forehead kissed to the soft skin between Patrick’s shoulder blades, Pete slowly circles Patrick’s hole with the slippery head of his cock. “God, you have no idea how much I want to just—”

“So do it,” Patrick hisses, teeth clenched. “Fucking  _ do it. _ Pete, I swear to fucking  _ God,  _ I’m—I’m going insane. Fuck you, okay? Just—just  _ fuck you.” _

“Shh,” Pete whispers. “You’ll get what you need.”

And then he’s sinking into Patrick with one long, slow stroke. Filling him up, until there’s not enough room inside of Patrick for air  _ and _ Pete. He holds himself still on trembling arms and throbs in Patrick like a second heartbeat. The noises Patrick makes are hideous; whining, slithery sounds. Pete’s hand closes over Patrick’s on the mattress, winding their fingers together, and begins to thrust in earnest. 

They move in one rolling motion, united in need, single-minded in pleasure. Patrick rubs his dick against the sheets and rubs his ass against Pete, feels the rough edge of Pete’s stubble scrape his shoulders, his spine, his throat and turns his head to catch Pete’s mouth in a hot-with-too-much-tongue kiss. He bites the soft fullness of Pete’s bottom lip and thinks of peaches and juices and sugary sweetness and then he’s coming apart, exploding, coming harder than he ever has in his life, all over his sheets and his belly and his sweat-damp thighs.

Pete stutters and groans and bites down onto Patrick’s tongue as he grinds his dick deep and hard into Patrick’s ass. Patrick feels the hot flood of Pete’s orgasm, the twitch of his cock as he comes. He collapses into Patrick, boneless. They breathe hard as Pete softens inside of him. 

“Ten out of ten,” Patrick groans. “Will ride again in the future. Would definitely recommend you to a friend.”

“Fuck you,” Pete murmurs, dotting tiny kisses over Patrick’s shoulders. “Gimme, like, half an hour, and I’m good to go again.”

Patrick tenses and says, “How long are you staying?” 

In his head, he’s planning how quickly he can get back to the office, which emails to tackle first, how to bend the figures into something that’ll appeal to Mr. Walker and his piles and piles of ethically-sourced, entirely legitimate American currency. It’s a banker’s dream, that— _ clean _ money. This perfect little bubble, like all bubbles, can’t last. He’s not the first executive to sneak out of the office for a little extracurricular relaxation, but now he needs to get back to work. And also, die of a stress-related heart attack, exacerbated by sleep deprivation. Still, dead men don’t feel bad for letting their boyfriends down, so there’s an upside. 

Pete pulls out and flops onto his back and looks at Patrick. “I told you—Henri’s with Bebe. You have me all to yourself, all night.”

“Oh,” Patrick says, and frowns. “Yeah. That’s great.” 

“What’s wrong?” Pete asks. “Why’re you frowning?”

Patrick smooths his face into a smile. “I’m not frowning,” he lies. “I’m just… thinking. That’s my thinking face.”

“You were frowning.”

“I was  _ not.” _

“If you want me to leave, just say so,” Pete says, annoyed, and, no, Patrick doesn’t  _ want _ Pete to leave, but he sort of  _ needs _ Pete to leave so he can get on with his job in secret like the horrible person that he is. Because Patrick’s life is complex in a very self-denying way. This, in a nutshell, is why Patrick is a terrible employee, which he could cope with, really. But he’s  _ also _ a terrible boyfriend, and all-round terrible human being and both of those feel a lot worse than sucking at his job. Exponential terribleness. Awful squared.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Patrick says honestly. He doesn’t, okay? Pete’s chest is warm and broad and tempting and Patrick would happily pass out draped over it and sleep until the effort of  _ breathing  _ doesn’t make his ears ring. “I want you to stay.”

Pete sulks. “You don’t  _ look _ like you want me to stay,” he says, pissed off. “What did I do wrong? You look like you want me to leave so you can… do whatever it is you do in here all day, by yourself without me interrupting. Is it, like—weird porn? Do you watch a lot of weird porn? I can deal with hentai, if that’s what it is.” 

“What? No?” Patrick says. He’s definitely frowning now, he can feel it creasing his brow. He hopes it’s an adorable, confused frown this time. He tries to lighten the mood. “Is that… Do  _ you  _ want to watch hentai together? Because we can do that if you want, and, like. I have a  _ lot _ of toys, so we could try—But, not right now. I just… have to send some emails. Job-hunting stuff, you know? Is that—Do you mind, if I do that? I’ll be quick.”

Patrick looks at his phone, face-down on the nightstand where it can’t light up with a message and betray him. What a terrible situation and who’s idea was this, anyway? His thumbs itch with the need to touch the screen, to apologise to Will, to make sure he still has a job to crawl back to. He looks back at Pete, who’s biting his lip and looking sex-rumpled and gorgeous and more understanding than he did thirty seconds ago. 

“Sure,” Pete says, shrugging easily. “I’ll make us something to eat. Are you hungry? I’m starving—Do you keep food in the fridge now you’re at home all day?”

Patrick gets a hand around his phone as Pete rolls off the bed and pads toward the door. The relief that crawls through him almost eclipses the guilt. Almost. He lifts his shoulders in a shrug and thumbs through the first few emails quickly. 

“I… There’s eggs, I think?” he says vaguely. “Cereal, definitely. Not sure about milk, though. Oh, and those chips you like, I picked up some of those…”

“Chips, eggs, cereal,” Pete says fondly, rolling his eyes. From the corner of his eye, Patrick is aware of Pete locating his jeans. “Lucky Charms-and-Dorito omelette, coming right up.”

Patrick is already looking through the figures Joe’s emailed him, not really listening to Pete at all. “Hmm? Yeah. Sounds amazing, babe. Whatever you want.”

Patrick emails someone from Trinity, sets up a meeting with the guys at SP for next week, skims the CFDs. Joe’s emailed him, asking if he wants to go to his place for dinner soon.  _ Bring Pete, _ he adds. In the kitchen, Pete opens cabinets and drawers and the huge refrigerator that never holds anything but half a block of cheese, a couple lemons and  _ maybe  _ an out-of-date carton of pre-sliced fruit. If Patrick’s going to commit to this double life, he really ought to buy some microwave meals, some fresh milk, maybe. The kind of things normal people keep in their refrigerators.

“Okay, you have, like,  _ no _ food. I’m going to the store,” Pete says. “Man cannot live on cereal omelettes alone—book of Pete, chapter three. Want anything special?”

There’s an email from Will. No subject header, marked as urgent. Patrick’s thumb hovers over it as a fast-rising tide of nausea climbs his throat. There’s bound to be a read receipt, there always is. “Um,” he says, not clicking on Will’s name. What Patrick needs is plausible deniability. “Whatever you like.”

Pete says something else, stomping around in Patrick’s hallway. Patrick stares at the email and the email stares back. It doesn’t take a clairvoyant to guess what’s contained therein. This is the problem with lying—the lie grows like a weed and chokes everything else around and the only way to escape is to grow bigger, faster. Patrick takes quick, panicky breaths. His actions at the meeting are beyond reasonable explanation. He is an idiot, engaging in idiotic behaviour. 

“Patrick?” Pete says, fully dressed and wearing his coat. Eyebrows raised, it’s clear he just asked Patrick a question.

Patrick vibrates at a frequency high enough to shatter glass. “Uh… No?” he hedges. Pete frowns, so, wrong answer. “I mean, yes. Absolutely yes.”

“I said, pasta or pizza?” Pete asks, carefully, like each word is a step onto thin ice over deep water. 

“Oh,” Patrick says. He scrubs one hand over his face. “I—I don’t know. Honestly, whatever you like is fine.” 

“Is everything… okay?” Pete says, moving closer, visibly concerned. Patrick fights the instinct to shove his phone under the pillow, or hurl it through the window. 

“Everything is fine. It’s just job-hunting stress, you know?”

Pete looks at him—knowing and caring and concerned—and Patrick has to swallow heavily to stop himself bursting into tears. “You’ll get another job,” Pete says. “You know that, right? You’re, like, the most committed guy I know, and  _ clearly _ you’re smart, so, yeah. Maybe don’t sweat the small stuff, ‘kay?”

Patrick laughs. It sounds hollow, echoing up through his chest. Now the endorphins are wearing off, Patrick’s exhausted. Exhausted by T.A.I. and exhausted by Will and exhausted by lying and there’s no end in sight. The light at the end of the tunnel has gone out and now it’s just  _ endless fucking tunnel. _ Truth is, Patrick doesn’t have time to sweat the small stuff. He’s too busy sweating the big, multi-billion-dollar stuff, thanks awfully. 

“Do you want to go to my friend’s house for dinner?” Patrick says, changing the subject. “He’s nice. Like, a little weird, I think, and he lives out in fucking… Ho-Ho-Kus, or something. But he’s pretty cool. He has kids, too, two little girls. Maybe you could bring Henri.”

Pete says, “I’d like that a lot,” and sounds like he actually  _ means _ it. Patrick wishes all of his interactions were as simple as they are with Pete. He invites Pete for dinner with a friend, Pete would like that a lot, so that’s what Pete says.  _ I’d like that a lot.  _ No subtext, no confusion, no panicky fear that it’s all a trap. 

“Good. I’ll let him know,” Patrick says hoarsely. He twists a chunk of the bedspread between his hands and looks out the window. 

“You look tired,” Pete says eventually. “Listen. Clean up, get back into bed and line up the trashiest show on Netflix. I’ll raid the nearest 7/11 for every kind of food we can eat without plates or cutlery. Nutritional content is not a consideration. We’re gonna load up on trans fats and unpronounceable additives. I bet you twenty dollars I can eat more sour gummy worms than you in one sitting, and I won’t even come close to barfing. Sound good?”

It sounds better than good. Patrick wipes a hand quickly over his eyes and takes a deep breath. If he looks at Pete, he’s going to start crying, and he lacks the emotional bandwidth to deal with that right now. He puts his phone back on the night stand and doesn’t touch Will’s email at all. 

He nods. “Yeah. I’d like that a lot. Hey—Could you give me a minute to get dressed? I can keep you company. And, like, make sure you don’t get lost.”

What Patrick means is that he doesn’t want to be alone right now. What Patrick means is Pete is his crutch, and a crutch is useless if it’s not right by your side. What Patrick means is, if Pete leaves the apartment, Patrick’s pretty likely to call a car and rush back to the office in sweatpants and a Red Sox jersey and mismatched socks, even though he doesn’t  _ want  _ to. 

Pete looks at him carefully. He leans back against the wall and shrugs. “I’d like that,” he says again. And he probably would. 

Patrick hurries to the bathroom and doesn’t look back. 


	20. Chapter 20

Come the morning, Patrick finds himself in Mr. Beckett’s office. Not Will, that would be bad enough, honestly. Imagine seeing _that_ face when you’re so tired you feel hungover, _no thank you._ No, it’s worse: Mr. Beckett _Senior._ Patrick sweats so much his glasses keep slipping down his nose. 

Proving that Patrick’s disliked on a cosmic level, he’s late. For work generally, and this meeting specifically. Not because he slept late—didn’t sleep much at all in fact, too busy staring at the ceiling and panicking himself into a low-key anxiety attack until he took himself off to the bathroom and submerged his head in a sinkful of cold water. ‘You’re all wet,’ Pete had mumbled, confused, when Patrick collapsed back into bed. ‘Sweaty,’ Patrick told him, and Pete made a sweet little noise and passed out again, petting Patrick’s damp and shaggy hair and Patrick carried on watching the passing headlights pattern the bedroom wall. So, yeah, he’s late because he couldn’t exactly kick Pete out of the apartment, could he? He had to lounge in bed and pretend he was relaxed and had nowhere else to be, goals he achieved by shutting his phone in a drawer and avoiding eye contact with the alarm clock on the nightstand. Like the passage of time could be stilled if Patrick just denied its existence. Every time he caught sight of those glowing red letters, his heart gave one those nasty clenches, like stepping into an open elevator shaft, or, according to WebMD, the early stages of a heart attack. 

Anyway, he’s at work, isn’t he? He made it, and that has to count for something.

The office smells of mahogany panelling, beeswax polish and old, New England money. Patrick can count on one hand the number of times he’s been summoned here during his career at T.A.I. Holdings. Once as an intern, again when he was promoted to Executive Manager, and, last time, when he pulled off the takeover that bought him temporary Wall Street infamy. That time, Mr. Beckett presented him with a bottle of scotch from his personal collection. This time, he isn’t even offered a cup of coffee. It’s best not to read into it too much. 

“Patrick,” says Mr. Beckett. He’s a William, too. Second to last in a long line of William Becketts, but Patrick can’t imagine him going by anything but ‘Mr. Beckett’. There was probably a neat little brass name plaque on his crib. He probably wore diapers cut from Harris tweed. 

Patrick says, “Yes, sir,” and then doesn’t say anything else. The purpose of this meeting wasn’t clear in Will’s email, but there’s a fat manila folder on the desk. There’s every possibility it’s Patrick’s personnel file. Everyone knows personnel files are like permanent records: they never signify something good. 

Mr. Beckett flicks through the folder. Unlike every other desk in the building, his doesn’t hold a computer or sleek, state-of-the-art laptop. Instead, there’s a thick sheaf of creamy letterhead, a leather-bound ledger, a collection of Mont Blanc Meisterstück pens. Like all dinosaurs, Mr. Beckett resists change. You don’t need technological advancement if you have the sharpest teeth, the longest claws. 

Mr. Beckett looks up. “Do you have any idea why I might’ve asked to see you?”

This is a loaded question; Patrick’s least favourite kind. There are a couple of options available to him. For example, he could start apologising now and hope to salvage a basic management position. Or he could aim big and pretend he thinks he’s up for promotion. 

“I had to leave early yesterday,” he says, because honesty is always the best policy. “My fiancé’s son was sick,” he adds, abandoning honesty immediately in favour of emotional manipulation.

Mr. Beckett’s tongue flickers across his thin lips, his eyes so reptilian Patrick has to wonder if he sits on a rock in the sun each morning to warm through. Patrick cannot fucking believe he’s appealing to the softer side of an apex predator. It’s like standing in front of a lion and offering a heartfelt speech about the pet cat you’ll leave behind if it follows its instinct to rip out an artery or three. Mr. Beckett folds his hands on the desk and looks at Patrick like he could swallow him whole without blinking.

“Your _fiancé’s_ son was sick?” Mr. Beckett says lightly. At this distance, it’s impossible to say if he’s annoyed or confused. His small, dark eyes are inscrutable.

“Just a little bit sick,” Patrick says quickly. “I mean, I don’t think he’s going to get sick, like, a lot. You know? It was a one-off incident of unavoidable sickness. It won’t happen again.”

Mr. Beckett holds up a thin hand. “Patrick, please. I can’t begin to explain to you how little I care about what you do outside of the office. I also don’t care about your fiancé, or his… _son.”_

He spits out the word ‘son’ like it tastes bad.

“Oh,” Patrick says. He worries his lip between his teeth. His pulse accelerates at speeds worthy of air speed records. “So…?”

“Hmm. Yes, well, it’s nothing drastic,” says Mr. Beckett, closing the folder and looking up with the dangerous smile Will’s inherited. “It occurs to me that William hasn’t seen a lot of the company, especially given the length of time he’s worked here. Not much at all. It’s high time he studied T.A.I. Holdings, learnt the ropes from the ground up, really gets his teeth into it. He approached me yesterday and asked if he could oversee the Trinity account. A bit of a sideways move for him, but it makes a lot of sense.”

“Oh,” Patrick squeaks again. It’s strangled this time. Either Beckett is firing him, or—No. The alternative is too awful to contemplate.

Mr. Beckett leans back in his chair. “I thought you could work alongside him.”

“Ngh?” So horrified is Patrick, he’s rendered incapable of vocalising actual _words._

It’s a beautiful move, really. A career checkmate. If Patrick works with William, Patrick will do William’s work. All of it. And Patrick already does the work of two or three enthusiastic employees. In any other circumstance, Patrick might admire the way William has pulled this off. But this is Patrick’s _life_ and William has _ruined_ it by doing absolutely _nothing._ Patrick shuffles in his seat and stares at a spot on the wall in horror.

Mr. Beckett sets down his pen and looks at Patrick, pleased. “Technically, he’ll be your superior,” he says, continuing to say horrible things, horribly. Patrick tries not to visibly squirm. He smiles his vaguest corporate smile. “I’m sure he won’t pull rank, though. He’s a smart boy, William. He’s going places. And you will be too, if you involve him in every aspect of your work.”

Patrick whimpers. _“Every_ aspect, sir?”

“Yes, of course.” Beckett’s eyebrows rise and his mouth knifes into a thin, vicious smile. “I don’t want Will to go to the _bathroom_ without you offering to help him with his zipper. Do we understand one another, Mr. Stump?”

When Patrick walked into T.A.I. Holdings this morning, he assumed he was about to get fired and that his life couldn’t possibly get any worse. If anything, getting fired woud’ve at least helped with the lying-to-Pete aspect of his emotional turmoil, even if it made the paying-the-mortgage facet much, much worse. It turns out, he’d grossly underexaggerated the scope of absolute fucking _absurdity_ the universe has stashed up its sleeve. That there is, in fact, a thick and sulphurous stratum _beneath_ rock bottom and he has begun to dig.

“We understand one another perfectly, sir,” Patrick says.

“This is a big opportunity for you, Patrick,” says Mr. Beckett, already flipping through his ledger. “Play your cards right and it might even land you a promotion.”

Six months ago, Patrick would’ve been elated by that offer. Now, all he feels is numb.

“That’s very generous of you, sir,” Patrick says, attempting meditative breathing through his nose.

“Yes, well,” Mr. Becket picks up his ledger and waves a hand toward the door. “Good to catch up. Now, get back to work.”

Patrick tries to look thrilled as he scuttles out of Mr. Beckett’s office. He tries to look like he’s rushing back to his own office to celebrate this wonderful stroke of luck. He tries to look like he’s not going to throw up. Fifteen floors down, he ducks into the employee bathroom and spends twelve minutes crying into a wad of toilet paper. For a masochistic moment, he imagines entering that into his time logs: _09:24-09:36 considered that Shakespeare might be wrong, nothing_ can _be said to be certain but death and taxes and burnout._

“Is everything okay?” Joe asks, concerned, when Patrick collapses into his chair. Patrick makes a soft sound of distress. “Talk to me, man. Fuck, what happened? He’s put you on probation? You have ten minutes to clear your desk before it self-destructs? He’s kidnapped your mom and he’s holding her hostage until you find a way to work 25 hours a day?”

“Everything is fine,” Patrick says, about all the terrible things that are not okay at all. The Trinity account paperwork is a mess. Patrick begins a frantic and hopeless organisation effort. 

Joe frowns. “Okay, what’s wrong? You’re freaking me out.”

And Patrick gets as far as “Will—” then Will walks into the room, looking _smug_ and _insufferable_ and he says, “Hello, roomies. I thought it made sense to take a desk in here while we work through this project,” and Joe’s mouth pops open like the trunk of a 1992 Corolla and Patrick can’t say anything at all. His whole life is a fucking collpasing star. 

They agree to meet at the Transit station in Ho-Ho-Kus. Patrick’s work week has been exactly 100-percent as awful as he imagined it would be. Exhaustion drips from him like sweat on a coke can. He has just about come up with a viable excuse for his wrinkled, bagel-crumb-spotted suit and tie—job interviews, networking event, advisory meeting with his bank manager re: the impact his imaginary unemployment might have on his very real mortgage—when Pete appears at the station doors. Layered up in a white crew neck under a charcoal cardigan under a leather jacket, he holds a bouquet of fat white tulips in one hand and the sticky fist of a small child in the other. 

Patrick just about freezes entirely, mid-wave, his eyes stuck on the kid like scotch tape.

“Oh,” Patrick says, eyes bulging. “Uhhh, hi. Both of you.”

“Hi,” Pete says, kissing Patrick briefly on the cheek. “Sorry we’re late but _somebody_ needed the bathroom.”

“You couldn’t hold it, huh?” Patrick jokes weakly. Because dad jokes. Dad jokes will definitely hide the weird, awkward staring.

“Right. We couldn’t find one at the station we hopped off at so he had to pee behind a bush which he’ll definitely tell his mom and then when we got back to the platform we’d missed the next train…” Pete trails off and follows Patrick’s stare. He touches the back of his neck self-consciously and says, “Um, is this cool? You _did_ say Henri could come. I mean, it’s a weeknight, so…”

“Um, yeah, of course,” Patrick cuts in. He _did_ say that, didn’t he? Sad and exhausted and broken open in the way only good sex gets him. It’s official. Patrick makes bad life choices. 

Pete exhales and holds up the flowers. “I brought these. I was gonna bring wine, too, but like, a free hand is sort of a prerequisite for travelling on public transportation with a six-year-old. Henri, this is Patrick. Say hi.”

Henri does not say hi. Henri stares at Patrick with the kind of venom that speaks of bleach in coffee and hair removal gel in shampoo. It’s a glare of ancient, ancestral hatred, handed down through generations of Two Christmas Kids. _Dad’s new boyfriend,_ this glare says, _what a total jerk._

“You came to our apartment and you said ‘fuck,’” Henri declares, in tones as ringing as they are shrill. They attract the disapproving glare of a passing middle-aged lady who tuts loudly. 

Pete turns the same aggressive shade of red as a ripe tomato. “Henri! Remember how we talked about this? Red word, buddy, ‘kay? That’s a _red_ word.”

“You’re not supposed to say fuck. Fuck is a very bad word,” Henri says seriously.

_“Henri!”_

“It’s not a problem.” Patrick tries not to laugh, because kids saying ‘fuck’ is objectively hilarious, and then he says, “Um. Is he likely to say that at Joe’s house?”

“No, he’s not,” Pete says, offering Henri a very level, very Wentzian stare. Henri returns it sullenly. “This is just what happens when he spends two hours on three different trains. He’s cranky.”

“Am not,” Henri snaps. “Am not cranky. _You’re_ cranky. You’re cranky and you’re my _worst_ dad.”

 _“Only_ dad, pumpkin,” Pete tells his son.

“Two hours,” Patrick repeats. “I didn’t know…”

Pete shrugs. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, like he’s never met Patrick before in his life. At this point in their relationship, Patrick’s propensity to worry about, overthink, and generally _inflate_ every issue is pretty well-established.

“Fuck—I mean, _jeez,_ why didn’t you say something? We could’ve shared a cab.”

“Daaad,” Henri says, a whine edging through it. “He said it again.”

“Yes, he’s awful, isn’t he?” Pete agrees easily. “When you’re as big as Patrick you can say it as much as you like, deal? This—this is Patrick, by the way. Remember we talked about Patrick?”

Henri looks like it’s not a conversation he recalls with fondness and whimsy. Bottom lip pushed out to maximise the epic pout, he kicks at a pebble like he wishes it was Patrick’s crotch. “Friday night,” he tells Patrick acidly, “is _pizza_ night.”

So, this is going _super well._ Not only did Patrick set this child onto the path of foul language, inevitable antisocial behaviour and probable jail time, he interrupted _pizza night._ What’s the standard payoff in kid currency these days? An Xbox? A college fund? A pony? Patrick crouches down in his expensive suit and extends his hand toward Henri in an attempt to parlay: Kids like to be treated like adults, don’t they?

“Hi, buddy, I’m Patrick. I’m your daddy’s—" he looks up at Pete who raises both eyebrows, “—your daddy’s friend.”

Henri looks at Patrick’s hand like it’s coated in something sticky and unpleasant. Which is a little bit hypocritical coming from someone whose hands _are_ visibly coated in something sticky and unpleasant.

“You’re dad’s _boyfriend,”_ he says, bored. “Mom told me. Boyfriends is like friends, but you have sleepovers and stuff. I told mom Dillon is my boyfriend, but mom says boyfriends kiss sometimes—which is gross, like, ew, _girls_ wanna kiss—so, anyway, I just want a PlayStation.” He narrows his eyes. “Do _you_ have a PlayStation?”

It seems a lot is riding on the answer to this particular question: the likelihood of this conversation descending into a tantrum, Patrick’s continued relationship with Henri’s dad, and his worth as a human, generally speaking.

“Yes,” Patrick lies seamlessly, adding ‘buy a Playstation’ to his to-do list. He’ll buy a whole _clutch_ of PlayStations if it makes this child pretend to like him for the duration of the evening. “I love my PlayStation. You and your dad should come over and play sometime. We could get pizza. Have a boys’ night.”

Henri looks at him coolly and says, “Pepperoni?”

“Ch’yeah,” Patrick says. “Is there any other kind?”

Henri considers this, his head tipped to the side, his eyes exactly the same curious shade of burnt sugar as Pete’s. With care, he reaches out and shakes Patrick’s hand seriously. “‘Kay,” he says. “But we have to play Minecraft.”

The weight of the moment rolls away and Patrick straightens, flicking creases out of his pant legs and tucking the bouquet into the crook of his elbow so Pete has a hand free for Patrick to take and together the three of them walk toward the taxi rank.

“Nicely done,” Pete tells him quietly. “Handled like a champ. But… You don’t have a PlayStation.”

 _“Yet,”_ Patrick mutters.

Joe lives in a neat brick house, with an aggressively green lawn and a slate path flanked either side by early spring flowers and low, chilly-looking shrubbery. There’s a pink trike ditched in front of the garage, complete with a huge wicker basket and pastel-coloured streamers trailing from the handlebars. Further back, one of those creepy little ride-on cars with a big smiling face leers from the shadows. Henri takes in both of these things and turns to Pete, his tiny face scrunched like a fist, his affront ranking somewhere on the nuclear disaster scale. 

“They have _little kids?”_ Henri says, outraged, like he’s not six years old and carrying a Minecraft backpack stuffed with action figures. “Little _girl_ kids?”

“They’re basically your age,” Patrick says. “I mean, the youngest is a baby, but the eldest is, um. Three, I think. So, it’s only a couple years. Your dad’s five whole years older than I am and we get along fine.”

“No, we don’t,” Pete says, slinging an arm around Patrick’s shoulders. “You’re very annoying. This is a nice house. You ever thought about moving to the ‘burbs, Wall Street?”

Before Patrick can tell Pete he’d rather throw himself from the top of his building than move somewhere as painfully suburban as Ho-Ho-Kus, Henri interrupts. 

“Three?” Henri says in disbelief. Patrick doesn’t need to look at him to know he pouts in exactly the same way his dad does. “It’s a girl and it’s _three?_ Da-ad!”

“She,” Pete corrects, pulling an apologetic face at Patrick. _“She’s_ three. Don’t call people ‘it’, buddy. That’s not nice. And I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun playing with, uh…?”

He looks to Patrick for a clue. Patrick stares at a spot just beyond Joe’s porch and knocks on the handsome, navy blue front door. There’s no way he’s going to say—out loud—that he doesn’t remember the name of his friend’s child.

 _“He_ said there was gonna be _kids,”_ Henri says hotly, jabbing a stubby little kid finger in Patrick’s direction. “Three’s _babies,_ daddy. I don’t wanna play with _babies.”_

“You don’t have to play, but you do have to be nice,” Pete says, and Henri looks outraged, nuclear, apoplectic. He shades from the colour of bubblegum to deep, furious eggplant.

“Daddy, I don’t wanna—”

The inevitable public-transport-induced meltdown is averted by Joe opening the door. Henri goes instantly, miraculously shy and hides behind Pete’s legs. On Joe’s hip is the little girl featured in half the photographs on Joe’s desk at work, her thumb crammed into her mouth. Patrick feels a sudden clutch of nervous panic at the thought of Joe’s desk—Patrick doesn’t work with Joe for the duration of tonight’s activities. There can be no accidental anecdotes of recent workplace shenanigans. Careful, careful, careful. 

Lying is such a miserable, messy business. Sometimes, Patrick thinks he should retire from it and go straight.

“You made it,” Joe says heartily, steering them into the hallway and taking jackets and Henri’s backpack. He embraces Patrick with one arm and shakes Pete’s hand. Then, God bless Joe Trohman, he says, “Patrick, you won’t believe what happened at the office today, let me get you a drink and we can catch up. And Pete, it’s so great to finally meet you. This guy’s hidden you so well we started to think he made you up, isn’t that right, honey?”

Joe’s wife appears through the door to their left with child number two, this one tinier and pinker with more visible chin drool. Honestly, Patrick shares Henri’s mistrust of tiny infants; they’re unpredictable, prone to gumming on stray fingers or chins, plus one end vomits and the other poops and everything in between is messy and terrifying. 

Patrick closes his eyes and thinks briefly—Mary? Margot? _Marie!—_ he smiles and steps forward. “Marie, you’re looking beautiful,” he gushes. “This is my boyfriend, Pete. And this handsome young man is Pete’s son, Henri. Who’s _this_ beautiful girl?” 

Marie takes the flowers—a two-hand job. Horribly, this means she hands off the baby— _to him—_ and Patrick fumbles, almost drops her and God, _God,_ can you imagine the office politics _that_ might spark, but Pete steps in and intercepts and cradles the tiny bundle of pink sleepsuit and fluffy dark hair against his chest and Patrick stares, astonished, because suddenly he thinks he might _want a baby._

“She likes you,” Marie says fondly.

Pete shrugs and smiles and shifts the tiny, fist-chewing monster to his hip. “I like her,” he says. She stares up at him with huge blue eyes and smiles a wet, pink smile and Patrick almost thinks she might be a little bit cute until she blows a spit bubble that’s basically the size of the Hayden Planetarium. It pops, showering Pete’s hand in goo that he wipes off casually on the leg of his jeans, like it’s not the fucking grossest thing in the world. Patrick’s grimace is epic. Yeah, no. Maybe they’ll get a puppy instead.

Introductions continue over drinks and turn to cheerful conversation that centres mostly around the kids and Pete’s studio and Marie’s new job. This suits Patrick as the less he says, the less likely he is to blurt out something incriminating. He’s terrible at keeping secrets. A life of organised crime probably isn’t a good career choice. Marie keeps sneaking little glances at him then exchanging looks with Joe so Patrick assumes they’ve had lots of conversations about how ridiculous he is. Patrick anxiously picks at his entree, barely tasting it, panicking in near-silence until he’s sunk enough good wine that the buzzing in his ears drowns out the thrumming of his heart. 

The food is great. It’s _probably_ great. Patrick’s so exhausted even his taste buds are shutting down, a medical anomaly he’ll google later. He eats a little and drinks a lot and tries to talk enough to avoid suspicion. His knee bumps up against Pete’s under the table from time to time. Pete squeezes Patrick’s hand and kisses his cheek, a tiny gesture, but one that Patrick appreciates. Henri pulls a face at the PDA, so Patrick pulls one back. Joe’s daughters are adorable and charming and the eldest seems to sense Patrick has no idea what to do with kids, therefore her mission in life is to climb onto his lap. He gives in, in the end. Lets her sprawl across his Fifth Avenue cashmere with sticky hands and snotty nose. 

Pete kisses just behind his ear and whispers, “Kids suit you, you know.” Patrick grins, electric.

Full and clutching a glass of red like a lifebelt, Patrick follows Joe into the kitchen with his stack of dishes and hisses at him, “Dude, I need you to know that this is the most stressful experience of my life. And I’m including the fucking GMATs in that statement.”

“Fuck, he’s so sexy,” Joe whispers, craning his neck to look at Pete in the dining room. 

“Yeah,” Patrick agrees absently. “But, like, back to me for a minute…”

“No, seriously, he’s fucking _gorgeous,_ Patrick. What the fuck?”

“I know,” Patrick says irritably. “Would you like his number?”

“Honestly, I’m pretty sure I’m 99-percent heterosexual but, like, a guy could make an exception, you know? How’s a weird little dude like nab a hottie with a body like that?”

Patrick blows out a breath. His chest feels tight. Maybe he’s going to die. “God, I don’t even know. Sometimes, I think I’m dreaming, that he’s not actually real, because guys like that aren’t interested in guys like me. Then I remember I don’t actually _sleep_ so, probably not.”

“I mean. I have long suspected that you give _excellent_ blowjobs.”

“Fuck yeah I do,” says Patrick, grinning: they clink drinks. “But if you keep talking like that, I’m gonna have to downgrade your heterosexuality to a 63-percent. That’s not a very straight thing to say.”

Joe shrugs. “Whatever. Sexuality is a construct. I can appreciate aesthetics regardless of genitals and he is _ass_ -thetic, if you know what I mean.”

Joe tips another inch of red into Patrick’s glass and his own. Stripped down to his shirtsleeves, his tie loose and the top button of his shirt undone, Patrick tips his head back and stares at the recessed spotlight above his head until his eyes sting. 

“I think I might’ve fucked up,” Patrick says at length. “Like, a lot. I love him so much I feel like I’m drowning, only, he keeps tossing me lifebelts and I keep, like… You know...”

“Swimming toward the sharks?” 

“Yeah. That.”

Joe’s raised eyebrow speaks volumes. Unfortunately, so does his mouth. “This is exactly what happens when you lie to your significant other about something important. I hate to say I told you so—”

“So don’t,” Patrick sighs. He takes a mouthful of wine and wishes it was something stronger. “I know, okay? I’m working on it. Just don’t say anything tonight—”

“I’m not gonna say anything,” Joe interrupts, rummaging in the fridge and pulling out beer for Pete and juice for Henri. “Not on purpose, anyway. But I want it on the record that I think this is a _very bad idea.”_

“Of course it’s a bad idea,” Patrick scoffs. “Everything about this is a bad idea. You know how I know it’s a bad idea? Because it’s _my_ idea—”

“Hey,” Pete says from the kitchen door, his hand on Henri’s shoulder. Patrick goes temporarily blind with terror and jumps so hard the contents of his glass slosh over his hand. “Sorry to interrupt, we, uh. We figured we’d come give you a hand with those drinks.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Joe says, too quickly. A guilty flush creeps up the back of his neck that Patrick’s sure he mirrors tenfold. “Um. It’s microbrew, though. Is that okay? I’m kind of an asshole about beer.”

Pete speaks to Joe but looks at Patrick. “Yeah? Any fun secrets I should know?” Patrick withers, just a little bit, and buries his guilt—and his blush—in his wine glass. 

“Um, wait,” Joe looks through the fridge, clanking bottles. “Yes! This. You’re from Chicago, right? Try this—freakin’ _Pelican_ microbrew. They made it for their tenth anniversary.” 

_“The band_ Pelican?” Pete asks, delighted. “Holy smokes, that’s awesome! Did you ever see them live?”

Pete takes the bottle from Joe’s hand and they start talking about music. Patrick listens with half an ear and convinces himself that, like a Scooby Doo villain, he might’ve gotten away with it. He tells himself he’ll be more careful about what, exactly, comes out of his mouth for the rest of the evening. Maybe he should switch to water right away, just to make sure the alcohol doesn’t make him say something he can’t deny tomorrow. As if sensing Patrick’s oncoming sobriety and not agreeing with it _at all,_ Joe sloshes more red wine into Patrick’s glass and Patrick has no choice but to take a deep, fortifying gulp.

With horrible timing, Pete takes a brief sip of his beer and says, “What was the bad idea, anyway?” 

Patrick sucks in a startled breath, which is a terrible evolutionary response with a thick, bloody mouthful of Merlot on his tongue. He chokes, coughs, red wine sprays from his throat in an arc Rob Zombie would be proud of, dripping over Joe’s high gloss kitchen cabinets. Patrick wheezes and splutters and prays that death will at least be swift. For once, his inability to behave like a human person works to his advantage; no one questions him while they source kitchen towels for the cabinet and a glass of water for him. Patrick sucks it down in grateful gulps and wipes his streaming eyes on the back of his wrist. 

“Daddy, is he gonna die?” Henri asks. He doesn’t sound like he’d mind if the answer was ‘yes’. He sounds like he might want to poke Patrick’s corpse with a stick, Stand by Me style. 

“‘m fine,” Patrick wheezes. He’s not. There’s a quart of expensive wine gumming up his respiratory system. It would be entirely on-point if he passed out right here on Joe’s marble tiles rather than tell Pete the truth. Lightheaded, he slides to the floor and drops his head between his knees. Pete runs his fingers through Patrick’s hair and makes soft, soothing sounds in between reassuring Henri that no, Patrick’s not going to die and no, if he _does,_ Henri can’t have his PlayStation. Henri does a poor job of hiding his disappointment. 

“Um, dessert?” Joe asks. “It’s homemade!”

After dessert, they switch to coffee, pretending to be grown up, then back to alcohol, because they’re not. Joe’s house is warm and his sofa is comfortable and Pete has an arm draped around Patrick’s shoulders, thumbing the nape of his neck. Henri is sprawled across Pete’s whole lap and half of Patrick’s, dead asleep. The stripped back skeleton clock on the wall says it’s close to eleven, but it feels later. Patrick finds it harder to open his eyes with each blink. 

“Hey,” Pete murmurs, nudging him gently. “Maybe we should…”

Patrick rolls his neck with an almighty crack. “Huh. Yeah. We totally should.”

They say goodbye in the hallway, Patrick slipping on his jacket as Pete wrestles a wailing, cranky stormcloud of sleepy six-year-old into his puffy yellow coat. Marie tells them it was lovely to meet them and Patrick says they have to do it again at his place, then Joe says, “See you on Monday,” and everyone in the room goes rabbit-in-headlights still. Patrick’s lungs stutter, his heart too fast against his ribs. He stares at Pete, who looks back, his eyes completely and carefully blank. “Ha, ha, _ha,”_ Joe laughs awkwardly. “My bad—old habits die hard. What’s it been—seven years of Monday mornings? Easy mistake!”

Patrick resolves to kill him later, but for now, he hurries Pete out of the house and away from possible disaster. Their cab is waiting outside. The interior is warm, smells of synthetic vanilla, and there’s Turkish pop playing on the radio. 

“Tonight was great, but parts of it were really weird. Are you hiding something from me? If there’s something on your mind, or you have anything at all you want to tell me…” Pete says, then trails off. The look he gives Patrick is unreadable. 

There are a lot of unanswered emails on Patrick’s phone right now. Line upon line of Will’s name, each with a bright red exclamation point and an increasingly threatening subject header. Tonight, Patrick should take a cab back to the office and deal with them. 

But also: Tonight, Patrick met Pete’s son and it wasn’t awful. Tonight, he spent time with people he actually likes and he’d liked to do it again. Tonight, he wants to bask in the glow of feeling almost human. 

Patrick takes Pete’s hand across the backseat and murmurs, “Nothing at all is going on. Come back to my place? It’s closer. And before you argue with me, I want you to know that I’m _not_ gonna let you spend two hours on the subway with a six-year-old.”

Pete smiles and runs his fingers through Henri’s sleep-sweaty hair, then rubs his thumb over Patrick’s knuckles with just as much tenderness. This is one of those rare times that Patrick feels soft and made of love. 

“Come back to _my_ place,” Pete says. “We can sleep in my crappy bed and my kid can wake us at a totally unreasonable time. I might even make you breakfast.”

Patrick sighs and tips his head back against the seat, closing his eyes and revelling in the fact that he seems to have gotten away with it for now. 

“Sounds absolutely perfect. Wake me when we get there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, I'm sorry guys. These chapters seem to be steadily increasing in length (dirty jokes welcome). I hope everyone's having the best summer it's possible to have what with all the *waves hand vaguely at everything* you know...


	21. Chapter 21

Patrick’s exhausted. So. No change there, then. 

He’s used to feeling exhausted, though. He wears it like a yoke, knows the bruising weight on his shoulders in the same way he knows his own name, his date of birth, his social security number. Tiredness is an immutable fact of his health makeup. Tiredness is a constant he rarely thinks about. Tiredness is something his body just  _ deals with,  _ like breathing, like his heart beating. It doesn’t have a lot of impact on his day-to-day life. 

At least, that’s what he thinks, until he dozes off on Pete's sofa and Pete jabs him hard in the ribs and Patrick jolts awake and realises he just passed out  _ in the middle of a blowjob. _ That’s new. New and most unwelcome.

“Oh, good,” says Pete, with lots of sarcasm and a spit-shiny scowl, “You’re awake.”

“Um,” Patrick says.

“Well,” Pete adds, eyebrows raised, mouth vicious.  _ “Parts _ of you are awake.” 

Patrick blinks down at his sad little half-hardness. Usually, Patrick’s pretty proud of his dick—that pink and handsome thickness, framed by well-groomed pubic hair and neat, firm balls. He has to admit, it’s looked perkier. It lists, losing structural integrity, a Leaning Tower of Penis. It’s a very depressed-looking dick, if he’s honest.

“Am I boring you?” Pete asks. He wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist and sits back against the coffee table. He sounds hurt, but like he’s trying not to show it too much. “Like. Is it me? Is something wrong?” 

Where would Pete like him to start? 

Yesterday, in a show of blatant reverse-favouritism, Will summoned Patrick—only Patrick, Patrick and Patrick specifically—to his desk. There, in front of everyone, Will tasked him with alphabetising every file, folder and stray piece of paper related even vaguely to the Trinity account. Intern-level scut work, assigned to  _ Patrick _ , who  _ has a job, _ with a name plaque on his desk and a stack of actual work to do and  _ everything.  _ Patrick slept at the office, if passing out briefly, knees locked, leaning up against the stacks in the filing room counts as sleeping. 

Patrick shrugs helplessly and Pete makes a brief, wounded sound. 

“Okay, great,” says Pete. He stops looking like he’s trying not to look hurt and starts looking, well. Hurt. 

Patrick is either very bad at being a good boyfriend or very good at being a  _ bad  _ boyfriend. First the job and then the lying and now this. For someone who basically makes a living out of lying, he finds he has absolutely nothing to say in his defence.

Pete’s heavy eyebrows pinch and his mouth is still sort of swollen and damp from the effort of breathing life into limpness and his bottom lip might be sort of…  _ wobbling  _ a bit. Oh, God. If he cries, Patrick will definitely cry, too. 

“I don’t get it,” Pete says. Patrick stares at him helplessly, very aware of his hip-to-ankle nudity. He shuffles back into his shorts, jeans still pooled around his ankles. He swears his dick sighs, relieved.

Clearly, Pete’s not going to say anything else. Patrick blinks down at his exposed knees and says, “Um,” again and, when he realises that saying ‘um’ isn’t going to stop Pete feeling hurt—and, truly, Patrick would do  _ anything _ to stop Pete feeling hurt—he adds, “This has nothing to do with your blowjobs, I swear. You give awesome blowjobs—probably the best blowjobs I’ve ever had. You seem, like,  _ into _ it. Like you actually want to suck my dick, and not just like you’re filling time until you can, uh. You know? Fill me. My ass.” Apparently twelve years old, he forms a ring with his left thumb and pointer finger, pushes the pointer finger of his right hand into the middle, and jiggles it back and forth, the universal symbol for penetrative sex. “Til you can fuck me. You know?”

Pete looks not at all charmed and no less annoyed.

“So, you’re saying what I lack in skill I make up for in sloppy enthusiasm?” he asks pissily. “Gee, thanks a lot. You’re very charming. I feel very charmed right now.”

Patrick is too tired to soothe Pete’s ego. Not that he doesn’t want to soothe! Truly, he does! Patrick wants nothing more than to be soothing. He wants to tell Pete that his blowjobs excel not only in enthusiastic participation but also panache. That no one has ever sucked his dick with as much pizazz as Pete Wentz, Prince of Peen. But soothing is for people with functional levels of melatonin in their bloodstream. Patrick closes his eyes and listens to the jagged coastal roar of his pulse behind his eardrums. 

Pete huffs, irritated, and flops onto the far end of the couch. “Well. I guess that’s that on that.”

“I’m sorry,” says Patrick. It’s the truest thing he can say, given the circumstances.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t even care,” Pete says. Pete is a terrible liar. 

While Pete mulls over the ruined attempt at sexual congress in stoic silence, Patrick wills himself not to fall asleep  _ again.  _ He suspects that, if falling asleep in _ actus fellatio _ is a problem, falling asleep while they argue about it is probably grounds for a break-up. 

Eventually, awkward silence stretches into anger and Pete snaps. “That’s the third time in two weeks, you know. Not that I’m keeping track or anything, but yeah. Third time. I don’t get it. If I’ve ever had insecurities about our relationship—and God knows, Patrick,  _ I have— _ they were never about the sex. We  _ know  _ how to fuck. I thought the sex was the one thing we had absolutely right.”

Patrick blinks slowly and wishes his conversational centres weren’t stranded in the same foggy gulch as his sex drive. He’s pretty sure he  _ hasn’t _ fallen asleep mid-fuck  _ three times _ in the past two weeks. He’d remember that. But, since he can’t clearly recall eating lunch, sending any emails after 2pm, or travelling from the office to Pete’s apartment, anything is possible. His short-term memory is a lot like swiss cheese—pale and bland and full of holes.

“I don’t think—Three times?” he says dubiously.

Pete begins ticking off on his fingers: “Last Friday you said you were too tired to meet up. Sunday, you passed out while we were fooling around. Wednesday, you couldn’t even get it up, and I give, like—I give  _ good _ head, Patrick. I  _ know _ I do. You used to want to spend time with me, now you’re avoiding me like you owe me money. So, like. What the fuck is up with that?”

“I—I don’t know,” Patrick stammers. 

He doesn’t dare say anything else. He doesn’t  _ trust himself _ to say anything else. How do you explain to the love of your life that it’s not them, it’s your job, when they don’t think you  _ have _ a job? Does this make him a compulsive liar? Or a psychopath? Patrick’s dishonesty slips through his hands, slimy as an eel. His chest feels two sizes too small, his lungs tight.

Pete looks sad. “Look. If this was just an illicit hook-up and fucking me on a couch covered in milk stains and crayon marks is a problem for you, I think you owe me a heart-to-heart and a decent fucking break-up speech, okay?”

Turns out, shock outweighs the soporific properties of a 120-hour work week. Patrick’s eyes snap open with force, his heart rate spiking, his mouth dry. He stares at Pete, astonished.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he says, thoroughly indignant. “I don’t want to break up with you,”  _ do you have any idea how hard I’m working to keep us together,  _ he wants to add, but doesn’t, “Why would you  _ think _ that?”

Pete shrugs and curls back into the couch, his knees to his chest, his feet tucked up underneath him. It’s the first time Patrick’s ever seen him look small. This is— _ awful.  _ Patrick feels terrible.

“I think you’re lying to me,” Pete says. “I think Joe is covering for you and everyone knows what’s going on except me. That feels pretty fucking shitty, Patrick, just so we’re clear. I don’t feel trusted or respected or even  _ loved _ right now.”

Impulsively, Patrick leans forward and takes Pete’s hands in his own. Pete’s arms tense with the effort of trying not to pull away. Patrick holds on for dear life and ducks his head to meet Pete’s eyes. He takes his courage in both hands and decides he’s going to tell the truth for once.

Then, he opens his mouth and lies: “I’m absolutely not lying to you about anything.”

Pete’s lovely face turns utterly wracked and wretched. “So, what the hell is going on? You  _ liked  _ having sex with me,” he says weakly. “You did! We had  _ good  _ sex. And I don’t want you to feel that I’m  _ demanding _ my conjugal rights or whatever, I mean, I  _ know _ it’s not all about sex, and I know you don’t  _ owe  _ me orgasms or anything, but it’s not like I’m selfish. I’m making it good for you. At least, I think I am.”

“You are,” Patrick insists. “This is definitely not representative of your ability to suck dick, I swear.”

Patrick’s life was  _ supposed _ to be uncomplicated by sex when it was a revolving door of meaningless dicks attached to dead-eyed stockbrokers just like him. It was supposed to be  _ less  _ complicated when it became part of a real, grown-up relationship, yet here he is.

“I just want to know what’s going on with you,” Pete continues. “I feel like you’re lying to me about something, like you’re holding back. You check your phone when you think I’m not looking and you hide it under the couch cushions when you get caught out. You drop my calls during the day. You make excuses not to spend time together when I finish at the studio. Now this. I just—Listen. I know I’m a lot, okay. I know being with me isn’t easy, but I deserve better than—than  _ this.  _ I just need to know… is this a You Thing, or a Me Issue?”

Hearing Pete talk about himself like that—it’s not easy. Knowing he’s the cause of that pain feels even worse. Patrick looks directly into Pete’s remarkable eyes and latches onto the one thing he can say with absolute honesty.

“I am  _ not _ cheating on you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he says. “Babe, please. You are… you’re  _ wonderful. _ I’m fucking  _ insane  _ about you. I’m just—Stressed. Job offers aren’t as great as I thought they’d be, I think my old boss is blacklisting me, I’m worried I don’t have a purpose if it’s not corporate banking. But... I  _ love _ you. You’re it for me. One and only. True fucking blue.”

Patrick stares at the tense line of Pete’s lovely mouth, hears the sharp edge of panic in his breathing and realises; Pete’s  _ scared.  _ Pete’s scared of losing Patrick and scared of being hurt and scared that love is such an impossible leap, with absolutely no guarantees of a soft landing. It’s wholly understandable—relatable,  _ normal,  _ even—but it’s so bizarre to recognise that fear in  _ someone else _ that Patrick just stares for a moment, confused. 

“Is that really how you feel?” Pete asks softly, face crumpling like balled paper. Patrick nods and bites his lip. Pete breathes out. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I’m a horrible boyfriend.”

“You’re not! That’s not what I meant.”

“I am. Here you are, all stressed out and unemployed and I’m making this about  _ blowjobs.” _

A fresh spike of cortisol muddies Patrick’s veins. If he winces any harder, his teeth might crack. 

“Blowjobs are important,” Patrick says, feeling pathetic. “Never underestimate the power of oral sex.”

Pete leans forward, tips their foreheads together and kisses Patrick rough and sweet. There’s no way Patrick could feel any guiltier.

“Whatever,” Pete says, “I was selfish. Let me make it up to you. I can run you a bath, get you a glass of wine… Hey, I can give you a massage, and you’re absolutely encouraged to fall asleep while I do it, I swear.”

Okay, correction: Patrick absolutely  _ can  _ feel guiltier. “I—That’s not necessary. Can’t we just—”

Pete squeezes Patrick’s shoulders, looking pleased to have a purpose. “No arguments, Rickster. Let me take care of you.”

Pete is already on his feet, already heading for the bathroom. Hobbled by his sweatpants, Patrick stares miserably at the coffee table and wonders how he keeps finding himself in these ridiculous situations. It’s bordering on the absurd, at this point. He would appreciate, like, one fucking minute alone with his crippling self-esteem without his stupid mouth adding another problem.

In the next room, water crashes into the tub. Patrick hopes Pete fills it high enough to drown in.

Later that night—or, more accurately, early the next morning—Patrick stares at the blank television.

You’d think being soaked and scrubbed and wined and rubbed down from head to toe would be relaxing. You’d think a man so thoroughly and attentively  _ pampered  _ might pass out for a solid eight hours and claim back a little of the crippling sleep debt he’s been building up. You’d think wrong. 

Instead, Patrick went to sleep a liar and woke up a fraud an hour later, Pete’s arm heavy on his hip, his breathing slow and sure. Patrick watched the red numbers on the alarm clock creep higher and higher until, at close to four, he couldn’t stand it a second longer and slipped away to the living room.

Apparently, Patrick is no longer granted the sweet release of unconsciousness. Wrapped in a throw that smells of Pete’s aftershave, he curls up on the broken-backed couch and listens to his own amplified heartbeat ringing in his ears. 

Patrick searches through himself, overturns every pebble of self-analysis and finds nothing but weary, aching guilt. He is a horrible person, all the way down to his marrow. Pete would be better off if Patrick slipped away into the dawn and never saw him again. He’s a cancer. A hideous, creeping sickness that sticks to everything it touches. He ought to—

“Daddy?” someone whisper-hisses from the doorway, interrupting Patrick’s pity party. It’s Henri, a sloppily over-filled glass clutched in both hands. “Oh. You’re not dad.”

Henri’s bare feet are shiny with spilled milk, his eyes heavy under his curls. He blinks at Patrick warily: they haven’t bonded yet, not really. Not that Patrick doesn’t like the kid plenty—he does. But he’s not a stepparent, just parentally contiguous, a mutual love for Pete the only thing linking the two of them. Patrick’s nothing but a strange man sitting in the living room, alone, in the dark.

Patrick shakes his head. “No, I’m not,” he agrees. “Do you want me to go wake him?”

“No,” Henri says, edging closer. He places the glass down on the edge of the coffee table and looks at Patrick carefully, head tipped to one side. “Can’t you sleep?” he asks, conversational as anything. Patrick shakes his head again. “Me either. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I watch cartoons.”

Patrick’s sure a mature and responsible adult would fetch the legal guardian of this shaggy-haired little milk thief. Rumour has it, Patrick is neither mature, nor responsible, so he shifts up, making room on the couch, and jerks his chin toward the TV, seizing the chance to be dad’s cool boyfriend.

“Knock yourself out, kiddo,” he says, scrubbing a hand over his jaw.

“You won’t tell?”

“Cross my heart. Just keep the volume down, we don’t want to wake your dad.”

Henri digs out the remote and worms under the edge of Patrick’s blanket, his warm, damp little feet snugged up against Patrick’s knees. He navigates Netflix expertly and puts on Ponyo because  _ of course _ the genetic scion of Pete Wentz—displayer of Murakami posters, drinker of cold brew, wearer of flannel—watches anime instead of SpongeBob. 

“I like this movie, it helps me sleep,” he tells Patrick, and Patrick nods sagely, because watching Studio Ghibli is exactly like taking a shot of NyQuil straight to the eyeballs, and of course a child has healthy sleep mechanisms when Patrick, alleged adult, has none at all. 

Henri’s a cool kid, Patrick thinks. He just hopes he doesn’t damage him too badly when this inevitably blows up in his face.

Patrick finds a letter in his mailbox on Monday morning and spends most of the day staring at it. He found it next to his Wall Street Journal and stuffed it into his briefcase before he could overthink it. He keeps sneaking glances at it when he should be working. The Trinity account is at critical mass and a bunch of shorter-term investments need careful handling and there’s a shareholder meeting early next week and Pete wants to meet up for dinner, unaware of Patrick’s pressing work commitments, and he has this weird pain in his chest he should probably speak to someone about, but instead, he stares at the letter. In the car on the way to work. Riding the elevator up the 48th floor. At his desk, when Will’s not looking. In the bathroom, during lunch, and on the ride home, holding it up to the light like being disinherited won’t hurt as much if he doesn’t actually break the seal. 

Rationally, Patrick knows his dad probably wouldn’t go that far, that he’d require more than one folded sheet of paper to air his grievances if he did. He also knows that nothing his dad has ever said to him has ever left Patrick feeling better about himself than he did before the conversation began. 

He flips the envelope over in his hands, rubbing his thumb against the hand-written address, the Boston postmark. Then, he props it against the toaster and stares at it some more. His reluctance makes no sense; Patrick is an expert at hurting himself, there is literally nothing that his dad could say to him that would cause more emotional damage than Patrick’s haphazardly-crafted lived reality. Might as well let someone else do the grunt work for once. Might as well bruise under someone else’s blows instead of his own. 

His laptop pings with incoming email. Patrick doesn’t have time for this—this  _ maudlin. _ These  _ emotions. _

“I should open the letter,” he tells his coffee machine. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t respond, and isn’t that a laugh—reduced to conversing with appliances because he’s cut himself off from everyone else in his life. 

“I’m opening the letter,” he tells the laptop. “And you can’t stop me.”

Cheerfully, the laptop pings again. Annoyed at his dad, his job, but mostly himself, he shoves it to one side and snatches the envelope up from the counter. He digs into the seal with his thumb and a single sheet of folded paper slides out. When Patrick unfolds it, a check drops onto the marble counter. 

_ Your share, Patrick,  _ reads the note, in his dad’s no-nonsense script. Stump Senior scrapes words into the page with irritated purpose, like taking the time to write down his thoughts annoys him, even now he’s retired. Patrick plucks the check from the counter and feels his eyes widen: even for an investment banker, it’s a big number. Huge, in fact. Enough to quit his job and start over again in Mexico, if that’s what he wants. This would pay off his mortgage. This would pay off his mortgage  _ and _ allow him to retrain. Patrick could solve all his problems with nothing more than a trip to the bank and a five day clearing period. 

The thing is though, Patrick’s tired of depending on his family and his connections and his known provenance as a Stump to get himself out of trouble. He’s  _ proud _ and he’s  _ stubborn  _ and he can  _ do it himself.  _ Maybe it’s because he’s a Taurus. Maybe it’s because he’s an idiot. He pads into his bedroom and opens the drawer and drops the check into the mess of mismatched socks and phone chargers for phones he hasn’t owned in years.

And then, he gets back to work.

Thursday, 7:30, Patrick is minding his own business and furtively WebMDing the weird fluttering sensation in his chest. It’s getting worse. He probably ought to consult a medic but medics are for people who get time off, so, like, 10 question cardiac health quiz it is. He has it narrowed down to pregnancy or cancer when a shadow falls across his desk. Two fingers pressed to his carotid artery, Patrick looks up and meets Will’s sharp eyes. His pulse increases painfully under his fingertips. 

“Is everything okay? You look stressed,” Will says sweetly.

Today, Will’s dressed in latte-coloured cashmere, paired with a sharp-collared white shirt of impossible crispness, his hair swept up and off his brow. He smells like the inside of a pomade jar and smiles like he read about it in a book once but has no idea about the practical application, baring his teeth and narrowing his eyes like all good man-eating carnivores. Patrick wishes he had an office with a door. He’s almost certain that whatever summoning circle Will leapt from would prevent him from crossing thresholds uninvited. 

“I’m fine,” Patrick says, leaning back in his chair warily. “I was just… practising arterial massage. I read about it online. Really good for blood flow and increased productivity, apparently.”

“That’s good to hear,” Will says, showing more teeth. He prowls to the window, all feline grace, his hands folded behind his back as he looks out at the glow of the city below. The machismo rolls off him like cologne, stinking up the room. Patrick watches him with the fear of a gazelle cut off from the rest of the herd and fights the urge to take cover under his desk.

“Can I help you with something, Mr. Beckett?” Patrick asks, aiming for mild but hitting shrill.

“I’m worried about you,” Will declares, still looking out of the window. “You seem… unhappy. Are you unhappy, Patrick?”

Patrick stares at Will, thoroughly astonished. It’s the most thoughtful thing Will’s ever said to him, including during the unmemorable ten minutes or so he spent with parts of his body literally inside parts of Patrick’s. Of course, this means it’s a trap. Patrick’s heart gives a peculiar, irregular thump, like it can’t decide if it wants to speed up or stop entirely. Is there a correct answer to a question like that? Patrick swallows and blinks and shakes his head slowly.

“I’m very happy here, sir,” he lies. Lying comes  _ so _ easily to his treacherous tongue. Once the untruths are peeled away, it feels like there’s nothing left of  _ Patrick _ underneath them.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Will says. It’s not a particularly threatening thing to say, but Patrick is so terrified of Will generally that he prickles with goosebumps anyway. He turns away from the window and moves to the edge of Patrick’s desk. “You know, I’d started to think you weren’t taking this job seriously. All that running off during office hours, spending your weekends at home instead of picking up extra work like you used to. I was  _ worried,  _ Patrick. I was…  _ concerned.”  _ He nods to the edge of Patrick’s desk, oddly formal. “May I?”

Patrick has never wanted to share breathable air with someone less than he wants to share it with Will. Still, this conversation is not unbearable,as far as their conversations go, so he nods and lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Be my guest.”

Will sits, legs spread slightly, claiming real estate on Patrick’s personal space. He picks up one of Patrick’s pens and examines it casually. This close, Patrick can smell the scotch on his breath. He envies Will the numbing properties of alcohol. He’s also terrified of the terrible things a drunk Will might be capable of.

“You had such a promising future here,” Will sighs, as if speaking a painful truth. The past tense isn’t wasted on Patrick, sweating his way to swampy pit stains. “It’s so sad that you’d throw it all away on—on a  _ pointless _ relationship. Don’t you  _ want _ to excel, Patrick? You were on track for a promotion, for a fucking  _ office.  _ What can  _ he  _ offer you that your career can’t?”

Patrick closes his eyes briefly and sees the itemised list swimming behind his eyelids. “I don’t think the two are comparable, are they?” he asks tentatively. 

Will goes back to staring out of the floor-to-ceiling windows, his pretty face twisted into a pensive scowl. It’s clear he doesn’t like losing things he perceives to be his. Worrying, really, that a drunken grope in a supply closet meant quite so much to him.

Sad, that this is the height of human connection for him. Patrick almost begins to feel sorry for him. Until he opens his mouth and carries on talking.

“Well, here we are,” Will goes on. “You’re on the verge of losing your job in—and I cannot stress this enough, Patrick, truly, I cannot— _ deeply _ humiliating circumstances.”

Patrick looks up quickly. “I’m what now?”

“The kind of circumstances that leave you unemployable by  _ any _ major banking firm, not only in New York, not only in the United States, but  _ anywhere in the world,”  _ Will says, as if Patrick didn’t speak at all. “You won’t get a job in Sydney, or Singapore, or London, or Tokyo. When T.A.I. is through with you, they won’t even hire you as a teller in a suburban Bank of America.”

Patrick blinks. “Are you...  _ threatening  _ me?”

“Threatening? No.  _ Threatening  _ implies I won’t do it. You’re a risk now, Patrick. A loose cannon. So, I can allow you to carry on, keep paying you the salary you no longer deserve while you take advantage of my good nature. Or,” Will turns and pins Patrick in place with a look, “I can make an example of you.”

Patrick tries not to squirm, visibly at least, even though his stomach is churning. He’s trapped, the option of quitting and salvaging some sort of professional reputation is a ship that has well and truly sailed. Is that gorge, or tears rising in the back of his throat? Oh,  _ God.  _ Fucking  _ God.  _ He can’t  _ cry _ in front of Will. On the edge of the desk, Will shifts, all the better to view Patrick’s reaction, presumably. Will smiles coldly, a snake in a bespoke three-piece suit and handmade shoes. Patrick’s chest gives another of those painful twists. 

Patrick looses a sad, sheepy bleat. “You can’t  _ do _ that. It’s not fair. I’m  _ good _ at my job!”

“Life’s not fair.”

“But—”

“I  _ could  _ reconsider,” Will says, glancing down at his hands. He begins using the pocket clip of Patrick’s pen to clean delicately under his nails. “Given the right set of circumstances. If your… compliance was, shall we say, all inclusive.”

“I don’t—I don’t understand,” Patrick says, although he has a sinking feeling he understands perfectly. 

Will shrugs and offers Patrick a wolfy leer. “I’m just saying. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. All’s fair in love and corporate banking, Mr. Stump.”

Translation: ‘You suck my dick; I don’t fire you on spurious but undeniable grounds of gross misconduct.’ Patrick shudders, unable to hide his disgust. Will’s mouth moues into an unattractive sneer. 

“I have a—”

“A  _ boyfriend,  _ yes,” Will rolls his eyes, bored, “A boyfriend who, as I understand it, thinks you quit a couple weeks ago. Isn’t that right? It would be awful, truly, if he were to find out your  _ actual  _ employment status from someone other than you, don’t you think?”

Patrick’s head snaps up with the sharp, aggressive jerk of a marionette. “How do you know that?”

“Patrick, Patrick, Patrick,” Will says, almost fondly. “You are employed by one of the largest corporate banking firms in America. You handle sensitive financial information on a daily basis. The scope for… inappropriate technology use is  _ through the roof.  _ The last thing T.A.I. wants is accusations of insider trading.” 

“Yes, but—”

“Wake up, idiot!” Will barks. “We have  _ constant  _ access to everything on your company-issued phone and laptop—you signed the subject user agreement when you started working here, it was all there in black and white. Don’t play coy, it’s not cute.”

“Oh,” Patrick breathes. His voice is like air leaking from a balloon. The idea of Will reading his emails to Pete, his texts, the  _ dick pic. _ It’s enough to make his skin crawl. 

“Oh,” Will repeats, smiling in a very self-satisfied way. “So, I can ice your career ruining cake with a frosting of misappropriation of company property and sexting on company time. Like I said, Patrick, the closest you’ll get to working in finance after this is emptying out slot machines at a strip mall casino.”

Patrick can’t move. Fingernails digging painful divots into the arms of his chair, he sits monument-still, drowning in panic. Like the lead in a horror movie, Patrick sees no immediately apparent way out of this one. Patrick doesn’t see much at all, fear narrowing his vision to a shadowy black tunnel. He takes a quick, painful breath and finds he can’t release it, gaping like his lungs reject evolution and his mammalian need for breathable air. It’s not an asthma attack, at least, not like any asthma attack he’s experienced before. Heart rabbiting, lungs stammering, Patrick can only assume that he’s dying. 

He retches, hard, an undignified sound that pushes the air from his lungs. He’d hope he’s about to throw up all over Will’s expensive ashwood flooring, if he possessed the sense of self to hope for anything but another drawn breath. It hurts. It hurts  _ so much.  _ Nowhere and everywhere and all at once. He slithers from his chair and grabs at his desk, misses, and slides down to his knees. The solid edge of the desk smashes into his brow and Patrick sees red, tastes copper, feels his whole head ring with the bruising force of impact.

From his knees, it’s such a short drop to his side. His mouth opens in a soundless quest for air. His body thrums with adrenaline, with  _ fear, _ and all he can think, pulsing through the fog of each painful squeeze in his chest, is that he does not want to die.

Then, everything goes mercifully, wonderfully dark. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will Becket: Worst Boss Ever. Or have you had worse? He's a lot like my old boss in private legal practice, shoutout to Martin for providing the inspiration. 
> 
> Hope you're all having a wonderful week, cats and kittens :)


	22. Chapter 22

Patrick wakes up. 

He’s on a… sofa, he thinks. Maybe a bed—Home? No, the bed is wrong; too narrow, the mattress too thin. He experiences chest pain sharp enough that he wants to vomit but throwing up seems like a tragic waste of his clearly limited life force, so Patrick puts a pin in it for now and focuses instead on lying very, very still. He does not open his eyes. His headache feels life-threatening. 

Three things Patrick does not know: where he’s hurt, where he is, or how he got there.

What he needs is reconnaissance. 

So, Patrick takes stock of his limbs and various biological attachments. He asks himself: Does everything hurt? Does everything  _ move?  _ Is he in pain because of catastrophic injury? Or something more clinical?

He wriggles his toes a little under the starched cotton sheets, flexes his fingers, and tips his head first one way, and then the other. The only obvious points of pain are his chest—a dull throb when he draws breath—and his head. All limbs and critical appendages are attached and functioning as they’re supposed to. Conclusion: he wasn’t hit by a bus.

Okay, so, where is he?

Wherever he is, it stinks of antiseptic and recycled air and misery. It’s a smell that evokes childhood injuries and visits to grandma in the nursing home. The light that filters through his eyelids is somehow both sickly and too bright. There’s a low, humming buzz somewhere in the room and the rhythmic beep of medical machinery. Patrick smells _green_ and wrinkles his nose and deduces that he must be in the hospital. 

Final question: Why?

The last thing Patrick remembers is sitting at his desk and talking to… Actually, he doesn’t know. The memory is indistinct: a jagged shoreline at the edge of a foggy lake. Was it Joe, maybe? No…  _ Will _ . Patrick remembers Will’s smile and Will’s teeth but the things Will said slip away through the fog. Attempting to pull their conversation back makes his brain throb even more, so Patrick, with a level of diplomacy rarely available to him, decides that the memories will come back when they’re ready and pushing them is not worth the migraine. Hospitals tend to stock painkillers, so he concentrates on summoning lovely, numbing morphine via the power of positive thinking.

“Mmph,” says Patrick, to no one. The sound makes his head throb and his throat feels like shredded meat, bloodied and raw. He resolves to say nothing at all, to anyone, until every part of his body stops pulsing like it’s been submerged in quicklime.

“Oh, thank God,” a voice says, from somewhere to his left. Pete—It’s Pete, and his voice is shaking. Pete is frightened, and Patrick doesn’t know why. Logically, it probably has  _ something _ to do with the hospital bed. “Fuck, babe. You’re awake.”

Before Patrick can process the fragility of that sentiment, the raw fear, the unspoken idea that Patrick waking up wasn’t a certainty, Pete clasps Patrick’s hand and kisses his knuckles, gently, one by one. Patrick rolls his head toward Pete’s voice until their foreheads touch. He’s seeking comfort, maybe, or at least someone physically capable of pushing the button that dispenses opiates. Pete presses into the touch like a cat and rubs his nose the length of Patrick’s. His hand trembles in Patrick’s loose fist, his breathing quick and shaky. 

“Where?” Patrick croaks, structured sentences beyond him. 

Pete leans closer, his mouth pressed to Patrick’s pulse in his throat, like he needs the reassurance of aortic movement to prove Patrick’s not dead. “NewYork-Presbytarian,” he says. “You were feeling—not great. At work. So, they brought you here.” 

Patrick considers this and decides it sounds plausible, although he has no recollection of feeling unwell or travelling to the hospital or—he touches his throbbing head and feels bandage and surgical tape and sharp, steely pain—contusing himself with blunt force trauma, apparently. This must be the source of his ill-health, he decides. He... tripped, maybe? Yes, he tripped and banged his head and now he’s in the hospital with a killer headache. This feels more plausible than some explanations, less so than others. For example, a mugging is not unlikely. On the other hand, Patrick is fairly sure that he  _ didn’t  _ brain himself rescuing puppies from a burning orphanage. 

He nods and closes his eyes and takes a small, grateful sip from the paper cup of cool water Pete brings to his lips. 

Oh, there is  _ one _ thing, though. ‘At work,’ Pete said. Patrick was  _ at work,  _ at a job Pete thinks he quit weeks ago. Patrick’s chest starts to feel tight and tingly, a development that irritates the machine attached to the monitor on his finger and it begins to scream bloody murder. Patrick jumps and Pete says, “Oh fuck, no, no, no, not again,” his voice muddy with fear and it’s not like Patrick’s about to fall out of bed and bang his head again. So, like, maybe he’s  _ not  _ in the hospital re: head injury. 

The room fills with two nurses, a resident, and a crash cart, so Patrick assumes he’s dying which irritates him more than scares him. He’s been out cold for who knows how long, couldn’t he have died then, blissfully unaware of his fate? They poke him and prod him in extremely undignified ways. They shine a bright light into his eyes, his ears, his mouth. Someone checks his pulse and someone else slips a cuff onto his arm to check his blood pressure. They ask him ridiculous questions about current affairs. The resident consults the machine beside him and writes things onto his chart and makes encouraging sounds, like Patrick’s terribly clever for lying in a hospital bed and not actively dying. Patrick lies still and feels very aware of the blood rushing through the veins at his temples. He hopes that if he doesn’t move much, she’ll lose interest, like a bear, and leave him alone. 

Then she pulls back the curtain. Pete looks up and stops biting his fingernails but doesn’t stop looking terrified.

“Is he…?” Pete begins. Patrick resents the implication that he can’t answer basic questions about his own physical wellbeing, but Patrick’s also  _ really _ tired, so he doesn’t do much but glare.

“It’s okay, everything is looking much better,” she says. She turns up a dial on the IV and Patrick starts to relax. She adds, “It was a relatively mild heart attack, you’re very lucky,” and Patrick starts to feel a bit sick instead. 

“I had a—?” he starts gamely, but gives up and blinks at Pete, who looks back seriously and nods. Patrick’s almost certain Pete wouldn’t joke about something like this. This is a lot to take in. “What?”

“A heart attack, Mr. Stump,” she says again. “Well, a cardiac  _ incident,  _ to be exact. Cardiomyopathy. A reaction to extremes of emotion, including stress. Have you been… stressed at all?”

For a second, Patrick thinks he might laugh. He works in finance, notching more billable hours than Gordon Gecko. Stress ranks so high on his medical chart his  _ ulcers  _ are probably on the brink of stress-related aneurysm. The only surprise in all of this is that Patrick didn’t drop down dead from a heart attack years ago.

“I’m… a bit stressed, yes,” he admits stiffly.

Pete snorts softly from his chair by the bed, an odd noise that’s half incredulous mirth and half stifled sob. It’s a sound that hits Patrick like a wrecking ball: no one’s ever cared enough to cry about him. In fact, if Patrick is totally honest with himself, which he rarely strives to be, most people who’ve wandered into his life have seemed… relieved, honestly, to wander back out of it. Patrick is beginning to realise that his life is no longer his own to destroy, that, like a strong two-year portfolio, Pete is  _ invested _ in him. 

This sense of object permanence is strange: he’s no longer Schrodinger’s Banker, because he suspects Pete thinks about him often enough to make him real at all times. Which is ridiculous, because Patrick is nothing but a cleverly disguised dumpster fire dressed up in a Savile Row suit. 

“Well, you need to take a break,” she says, curtly, like it’s a perfectly reasonable request to make of someone expected to work seven days a week. She adds, “Or next time, you won’t be quite so lucky.”

He frowns. “What—”

“I mean, you’ll die,” she says. “Of a heart attack,” she adds. “A real one,” she finishes.

Patrick stares at her, open-mouthed, and tries to think of a witty repose. Not because he thinks she’s wrong, like, clearly, she’s  _ not wrong _ and he has the hospital gown to prove it, it’s just… Aren’t medical professionals supposed to be  _ gentle _ with the recently cardiac-impaired? Isn’t that exactly the sort of thing that’ll send him into stress-induced arrhythmia? It’ll be just his luck if he drops down dead in the middle of a hospital. Just his luck and  _ all her fault. _

“That,” he tells her, “is not reassuring.”

“Mr. Stump,” she says briskly, “I am not here to reassure you. I’m here to take care of you, and taking care of  _ alive  _ people is more rewarding than dealing with  _ dead _ ones. You need to listen to your body right now, because it is  _ ordering _ you to take a break.”

Patrick snaps his mouth shut at that, hard enough that his teeth click together. There’s not much he can say in response, is there? Not when he knows she’s right. There were signs, now he’s thinking about it. Those tiny fizzing pains in his fingertips. That nasty, clenching swoop in his chest, like he’d spent an hour on the Stairmaster when all he’d done in fact was sit at his laptop, answering emails and gambling pension funds. Patrick has turned ignoring his body into an art form.

Pete says, “Should I leave?” to the doctor, and Patrick feels sick. He wants to be alone with his thoughts and his fear and his own looming mortality less than he wants to do just about anything else he can think of. Silent with panic, he grips Pete’s wrist and shakes his head wildly and uses every non-verbal cue he knows to demonstrate how little he wants Pete to walk out the room. The machine attached to his fingertip begins to hum.

“You can stay,” she says, absently, checking the chart a final time and sliding it back into place at the foot of the bed. “Don’t let him get excited about anything, please.”

“I’ll make sure he takes it easy,” Pete says. “For once.”

“I’m sitting  _ right here,”  _ Patrick complains.

She levels a look at him. “For now,” she says ominously, and leaves. The room is silent once more, the only sound the steady tick of the heart rate monitor and their breathing.

For the first time since he opened his eyes, Patrick looks at Pete. He wishes he wasn’t hooked up to enough scientific equipment to keep a small passenger aircraft airborne. It would make running away a lot easier if he didn’t have to take an IV, monitor and—he reaches down and checks gingerly, and, oh yes—a urinary catheter along for the ride. Pete sits with one fist propping his chin, tiredness limning his handsome features like spilled honey. He doesn’t look as if he’s slept much in the past twenty-four hours.

“I’m so sorry,” Patrick says, in the same breath Pete says, “Shit, Patrick.” They stumble to a halt and smile awkwardly at one another. Patrick says, “I have a lot of questions, but, also, I’m  _ so  _ tired.”

Pete pets his hair gently. “You should sleep,” he whispers. “We can talk when you wake up.”

Patrick falls asleep listening to his own heartbeat and holding Pete’s hand. 

When Patrick wakes, Pete tells him all about his luck:

By some twist of fate, or an act of a God Patrick doesn’t actually believe in, Will and Patrick weren’t alone on the 48th floor.

(Not that Will would consider it lucky if he’d known that Joe had only stepped out to use the bathroom while Patrick was checking his pulse and frowning at WebMD. Not that Will would care too much even if Joe had walked in to find Patrick on the sharp end of a textbook example of workplace sexual harassment. Not that Will cares much at all about anyone that isn’t Will. Not that Pete knows this part of the story, although Patrick remembers it slowly, carefully, like squinting at a TV screen under muddied water.)

What luck Joe walked back into the office moments after Patrick headbutted the desk and clumsily removed a chunk of his left eyebrow and the skin and flesh beneath it. (This is why his head throbs, Patrick notes.) What luck Joe called an ambulance quickly and what luck Joe knew how to perform cardiac massage and kept it up for the five minutes and eleven seconds it took for an ambulance crew to arrive and make their way up to the 48th floor. And what  _ luck  _ Patrick’s heart hadn’t  _ actually _ given out, just gone ahead and forgotten how to beat properly, or things might’ve been so much worse. 

What luck Patrick’s in a bed and not a body bag. What luck he’s not dead.

Patrick cries a bit and so does Pete. When Patrick’s mom calls, Pete answers and they make awkward introductions before discussing the intricacies of Patrick’s recent medical trauma. 

The rest of the day passes in a blur of blood tests and physical examinations and limited cable channels on the bedside TV. At mealtimes, someone fetches him plastic trays of unappealing food, which Patrick offers to share with Pete and Pete politely refuses. Pete tries to read to him, which is very sweet, but after a few chapters Patrick starts to feel like the heroine in a nineteenth century romance novel but with more Hemingway and he’s forced to beg Pete to please be quiet. Patrick sleeps a lot and doesn’t talk much. Medical disaster, it turns out, is excellent for avoiding personal conversation.

At some point, Pete leaves. To speak to Bebe about collecting Henri from school and to go to Patrick’s apartment in search of a phone charger and wash bag and something Patrick can wear instead of the open-assed paper hospital gown. Patrick watches a soap opera he doesn’t recognise and an old movie he  _ does,  _ and at some point, he falls asleep again, and he doesn’t wake up until something large and solid that feels like an overnight bag hits his legs.

Patrick blinks toward his shins. It  _ is  _ an overnight bag:  _ his _ overnight bag. The bruising force with which it hits him feels unnecessary. Patrick looks up at Pete and finds him pale and annoyed, a muscle ticking in his clenched jaw, his whisky eyes licked with flame.

“Is… something wrong?” Patrick croaks, wincing. His throat still hurts, a side-effect of the hurried intubation that kept him breathing in the back of the ambulance. It’s uncomfortable, examining his own mortality every time he asks for a drink of water. Patrick does not love it. He loves the look of annoyance in Pete’s eyes even less, though.

“I don’t know, Patrick,” Pete says, with heavy stress on Patrick’s name. “Is it?”

“You seem quite angry,” Patrick says, carefully.

“Do I?” Pete asks, asinine. He shoots Patrick an accusatory look, like Patrick is doing something wrong and not just lying in bed, recovering from an actual heart attack. “Why do you suppose I might be  _ angry?” _

Honestly—Patrick could write a list of reasons Pete might be angry with him. He assumes the ‘at work’ part of Patrick’s recent foray into almost dying has finally sunk in. People don’t like to be lied to, as a general rule. Patrick’s going to face up to it—he  _ is!— _ it’s just. Maybe he was hoping he could have a few more days of bed rest before he got all  _ I cannot tell a lie. _

“Before you yell at me,” Patrick begins, “I want to remind you that, okay, one—I almost died yesterday. Like, literally, I  _ almost died.  _ And, two—I can’t yell back, because my throat really hurts, because, and I feel like I can’t stress this enough,  _ I almost died yesterday.” _

“Duly noted,” Pete says, tugging things out of the bag and tossing them haphazardly across Patrick’s bed. There’s a Prince tour shirt, touchably soft with wear and stretched around the collar; three different phone chargers, vintage and state of repair variable; Pete’s Bears sweater that Patrick has aggressively co-opted; a packet of Red Vines; a copy of Catcher in the Rye and several back issues of a magazine about guitars that Patrick subscribes to but never has the chance to read. It’s not a random assortment. They are things chosen by someone who loves him, who  _ knows _ him. Patrick is touched with impossible rosy fondness.

“Thanks, Pete,” he says, his voice damp with sincerity.

“Oh no,” Pete says. “Don’t you  _ ‘thanks, Pete’  _ me. You have a lot of explaining to do.”

Patrick blinks slowly. “Um? Is this about the, uh. The work… thing?”

“Oh, I’m mad about the work thing,” Pete assures him. “I’m very mad about the work thing, but, like. You only hurt yourself with that, didn’t you? So, I’m working through it. What else might I be mad about, Patrick?”

Patrick is beginning to dislike this game.

“I don’t like this game,” he bleats.

Pete shrugs, like he cares not at all whether Patrick likes or dislikes guessing which thing he’s done and concealed that Pete might’ve found out about this time. It’s exhausting, keeping so many secrets. Patrick is  _ exhausted _ and scared and a little bit fed up that he keeps getting found out so easily. God, what’s the point in an expensive, sharky Ivy League education if it doesn’t even teach you how to cover your tracks effectively?

“Keep guessing,” Pete says, his voice tight with this undisclosed irritation.

Patrick suspects that his recent medical incident is the only thing stopping Pete from screaming at him. He wonders if he can have another, just to reclaim the veneer of civility. Patrick tries to decide if this means he’s suffering from Munchausen’s, or if he’s just a common-or-garden psychopath. All of this supposition is doing nothing for his headache.

“I, uh. I don’t know?” Patrick says. “But I want you to know that whatever it is, I love you very much and I promise I won’t do it again.  _ Whatever _ it is. Just—please be aware that there’s literally nothing you can say right now that I won’t apologise for. And remember, I had a heart attack yesterday.”

Pete doesn’t say a word. Instead, he rummages in a zippered side pocket and produces a piece of paper, neatly folded, and drops it into Patrick’s lap. It’s a check. The life-changing check. Patrick’s stomach swan dives. He makes a sound of anguish so bitter, it’s like biting directly into a lemon.

“I can explain,” he whimpers. When he reaches for Pete’s hand, Pete very deliberately moves it out of reach.

Pete nods and pulls a face like he doubts it. “Yeah?” he says. “I really hope you can, because what I’m seeing is  _ another fucking deceit.  _ You were going to tell me you couldn’t quit because you’d lose everything, weren’t you?”

“Um,” Patrick says, meaning ‘yes.’

“And yet, there you were, with a  _ literal fucking fortune _ stuffed in your night stand.” Pete tugs on his hair and leaves it in big, swooping spikes. “Do you have  _ any  _ idea what you could’ve done with that money? Fuck, Patrick. You could’ve retrained. You could’ve lived without working for  _ years.  _ You could’ve fucking  _ donated  _ it to charity, if you hate your dad that much. I know I say this a lot when you’re involved, but: what the  _ fuck?” _

Pete scrapes a hand over his jaw, his stubble audible in a way Patrick would find knee-weakeningly sexy in literally any other situation. Right now, it just reminds him that Pete hasn’t been home to shave because he’s spent the night sleeping in a cramped hospital chair, instead. That Pete sat, upright and awake and  _ scared _ and it’s all because of Patrick.

“And it’s not even about me, is it?” Pete goes on. Patrick leans away from him, stung. “It’s about  _ my son.  _ I have to worry about him, and I have to worry about you, and I have to worry about the ways you might hurt him, and, apparently, I have to worry about you fucking  _ dying _ on us, and how Henri might deal with that, because you… you… Jesus. Why would you  _ do  _ this?” 

Patrick stares at the sheets and finds he has nothing believable to say in his defence. 

“I hoped you wouldn’t find out,” he says, and winces, because if that’s the best he can come up with, Pete probably ought to do himself a favour and walk out without looking back.

“That’s the best you can come up with?” Pete asks, disbelieving. “Come on, Patrick. You can do better than that. Didn’t they teach you  _ anything _ in business school?”

“I don’t have an excuse,” Patrick admits softly. “I’m a horrible person and you deserve so much better than what I’m, apparently, capable of offering you. I’m going to quit, if that makes any difference at all, but I’ll understand if it doesn’t.”

Pete pulls a face of such tragic irritation that Patrick wants to laugh. Or, he would in literally any other situation. He says, “Don’t you ever get tired of lying all the time? Don’t you want… more? God, there is so much fucking more out there than this endless treadmill of work and exhaustion and lies. Don’t you  _ want _ that?”

Patrick shrugs and looks up through his stringy, unwashed bangs. “I mean. I  _ do  _ love you.” It comes out wrong and he winces and opens his mouth to fix it but Pete raises a hand so he stops.

None of this is going how Patrick imagined it would, but then, what part of his life is simple anyway? He worries his lip between his teeth and pokes at the catheter embedded in the back of his hand until blood wells through the dressing and Pete knocks his hand away, exasperated. “Don’t  _ do  _ that,” he chastises. “Haven’t you hurt yourself enough for one lifetime?”

“Sorry,” Patrick says, sounding very small. Pete sighs mightily and collapses back into the chair at Patrick’s bedside. 

“I didn’t think I’d see another work-related hospital incident after my breakdown,” Pete says quietly, tracing a pattern on the hospital sheets. Patrick follows the motion, watches Pete’s fingertip wind across the fabric. “I thought I’d walked away from what it meant to sell your soul to a company for a decent paycheck and an annual bonus. Then I met you. And you pulled me right back in.”

“Sorry,” Patrick says automatically. Pete doesn’t look angry this time, he just looks  _ sad,  _ as if Patrick fucking up was an inevitability. As if he’s already decided he doesn’t deserve anything better. Patrick’s heart contracts, icing over, sheet upon sheet, like the waves off South Haven pier in winter.

“Do you have any idea how scared I’ve been?” Pete asks, his voice tight with fear he’s trying his best to play off as irritation. Patrick tips his head down and stares at the bed and wishes himself as small as Pete’s making him feel. “You—I don’t think you get it. Truly, I don’t. I fucking  _ love _ you, asshole.”

Patrick makes a sound of real human suffering. He doesn’t trust himself to speak.

“For a long time, I thought you didn’t feel the same way,” Pete goes on, knifing into Patrick’s heart with every word. “I thought you kept…  _ doing _ this shit because you hoped I wouldn’t try to get close to you. But then I realised something: you  _ do _ love me; you just don’t think you deserve  _ my  _ love in return. You keep doing the most awful, hurtful things because you’ve decided you’re not worthy of love, or kindness, or basic respect. You’ll do everything you can to push me away, not because you want me to leave, but because you’re scared of what’ll happen if I stay. Am I making sense, Patrick?”

Patrick wishes he had something clever to say, but nothing comes to mind. Pete is making more sense than he cares to admit. He twists a chunk of the sheet between his hands and takes a deep breath. Speaking is ill-advised: if he opens his mouth, the only thing he’ll do is bawl his eyes out. He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and bites down, hard.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Pete says, resting his head against Patrick’s chest, just above his heart. “I’m invested in you now, for some reason. You’re not allowed to leave me like  _ this.” _

He gestures around the room, at the monitors and the IV and Patrick gets it, really he does. He doesn’t want to go like  _ this,  _ either.

Patrick nods and wraps his hand in Pete’s hair, stroking gently over his scalp. After a minute, he says, “So, just to clarify, you’re not, like, dumping me. Right?”

“No, but I haven’t ruled out killing you myself,” Pete says. His tone is a complete mystery to Patrick, but he snuggles closer to Patrick’s chest, which seems positive enough that Patrick lifts the edge of his blanket and drapes it over Pete’s shoulders. “I’m still mad,” Pete assures him, even as Patrick tips his chin against the crown of Pete’s head and breathes in the smell of his scalp. “I’m, just—I’m very mad. But also, kind of relieved you’re not dead. You’re cashing in a lot of fear-related good feeling right now.”

Patrick sifts through the assorted flotsam strewn across the bed with one hand until he comes across the copy of Catcher in the Rye. He holds it out to Pete solemnly and says, “You can read this to me, if you like?”

Pete looks at the book, then back at Patrick, then back at the book once more. He shakes his head in disbelief and he plucks the book from Patrick’s hand with a world weary sigh of disdain. It’s clear Pete has a lot of Thoughts about Salinger, which is ridiculous because he reads Hemingway and  _ Celine.  _ He opens the book and purses his lips and rolls his eyes and generally makes it known that he’s doing this under duress. 

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth,” Pete says, and Patrick leans his head back into the pillow and closes his eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I told myself this chapter would be really short because, like, what is there to say anyway, amirite? And then I remembered that I'm physically incapable of not dramatically overwriting basically anything I touch, so here we are, don't judge me.
> 
> Also, sorry this is a week late. I hope you're all well and taking care of yourselves, thank you so much to those who left kind words here and on tumblr. You guys are the best.


	23. Chapter 23

Patrick has passed the point, he thinks, where things surprise him.

It’s something about every aspect of his life raging with heat until it burns as bright as St Elmo’s fire. Something about his clusterfuck of a career spiralling into a terrifying tailspin until it lurched to a sudden, yet somehow not shocking, emergency stop of sexual harassment and cardiac arrest. Something about meeting a man who turned out not only blessed with a D game worthy of long-winded poetry, but who was also kind and gentle and Patrick’s fucking  _ soulmate,  _ most likely. 

Job-trashing, life-crashing, heart-smashing: Patrick is unsurprised that his existence thus far has culminated in a hospital bed. Patrick’s capacity for surprise has dwindled down to its last guttering flame.

But, Patrick is forced to admit, he feels a faint flicker of shock when a nurse pokes her kindly face around his door and says, “Honey, you have a visitor.” It’s probably Joe since it’s not like he has many friends in general, much less ones who might show up to see him at the hospital, but then she adds, “He says he’s your dad?”

And—honestly—you could knock Patrick down with a fucking  _ feather,  _ because, like a Jamie Lawson song, he wasn’t expecting  _ that. _

Patrick swallows his mouthful of bland hospital food and makes an inelegant sound in his throat. On the uncomfortable chair next to the bed, Pete’s eyebrows lift. Patrick’s not sure what to do, or how to react. He possesses a faint understanding that this is some kind of mistake.  _ Obviously  _ it’s a mistake because Patrick doesn’t have the kind of father who’d travel from Boston to visit him in the hospital, no matter how dramatic the circumstances that landed him there. He nods though, and says, “Uhuh,” squeakily, and she leaves.

“I can tell him to leave,” Pete says protectively, squaring his shoulders. “Just say the word babe, and he’s out of here.”

He would, too. Patrick knows he would. Pete’s the kind of boyfriend who would take a bullet for Patrick if the situation called for it. This is a mere tip of the Bad Situation iceberg, as far as Patrick’s concerned. Deal with the sex addict, wrangle him into a fulfilling relationship, balance out your man-child’s needs against those of your actual child—this is Pete’s life with Patrick and he’s handled all of it with aplomb. What’s a little dad-wrestling between friends, at this stage?

“Just relax,” Patrick assures him. “Like, how bad could it possibly be? It’s just my dad. It’s fine.”

And, while that might be true, it’s probably not. It’s probably not fine. It would be  _ fine  _ if this was Patrick’s mom, or his sister, or his great-aunt Mary from Cincinnati who he hasn’t seen since he was fifteen, but it’s not. It’s his  _ dad.  _ Patrick is not fine. He’s not fine about this, or any of the many things in his life that are not okay  _ at all.  _ It’s probably not even  _ Patrick’s _ dad. Patrick holds his breath and waits for someone else’s father to walk through the door, confused, looking for a different Patrick Stump who  _ isn’t  _ an unmitigated disaster child.

He doesn’t even have the time to have a decent panic attack, or, like, to hit the morphine button before the door opens. A large balloon enters.  _ Happy retirement,  _ it says, in big purple letters against a silver foil background. It bumps lazily against the doorframe, the ceiling, pursued at a leisurely distance by a pink ribbon attached to a man with steely hair and Patrick’s eyes and a Citarella Market grocery bag tucked under one arm.

“Patrick,” says the man, sounding a thousand different things at once and all of them unreadable to Patrick.

“Dad,” Patrick says, his breathing unsteady, so thick and humid he can feel it in his throat.

His dad looks at him from across the room, a careful look, like Patrick is something incredibly fragile and his dad is just, for the first time, discovering how breakable his son might be. 

“Oh, Patrick,” his dad says again.

“Don’t,” Patrick says sharply. There’s a hot water balloon swelling at the back of his throat. He doesn’t  _ think _ he’s the kind of guy who throws up during emotional situations, but the junior year piano recital incident is a carefully repressed memory that says otherwise. “You don’t get to walk in here and ‘Patrick’ me like that.”

His dad stops and twists the ribbon around his hand. “I just—I got here as fast as I could.”

Disloyal tears prick the back of Patrick’s eyes. He realises with mounting and unavoidable horror; he’s not going to barf. He’s going to fucking  _ cry.  _ And, no. No, no, no. Patrick isn’t ready to cry like this, in front of his almost-estranged father. He sniffs desperately and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes like a toddler. Beside him, Pete has gone carefully, protectively still.

“I’m sorry about the balloon. They didn’t have anything else that seemed… appropriate,” his dad goes on, sounding helpless and, under that, hurt. “It was this or ‘It’s a boy,’ which, um… is a little bit appropriate, I suppose?”

Patrick starts out trying not to cry, and ends up trying not to laugh. Patrick is also trying to recalibrate to a world in which his father stands by his hospital bed, dressed in boat shoes and khakis and a pastel pink sweater like a modern-day Tom Buchanan. Unperturbed by the silence, or possibly used to it, his dad begins unloading the grocery bag onto Patrick’s legs like the dessert cart at Café Boulud.

“I didn’t know if you were a chocolate kind of guy or if you prefer fruit—Ha! Not  _ that _ kind of fruit, I know you prefer  _ that,” _ Patrick’s dad guffaws chummily, catching Pete in the ribs with an elbow. “Get it?”

Pete stares at him, clearly amazed but thankfully silent.

“That’s, like, not even a little bit appropriate, dad,” Patrick points out, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Hmm? Sorry, didn’t mean anything by it. I bought those little blueberry tarts you used to love,” and Patrick  _ did  _ love them, when he was  _ eight _ and his dad used to take him into the city, “and chocolate macarons, oh, and this looked good—”

“Dad,” Patrick cuts in, carefully, trying not to unsettle the growing selection of carbohydrates and processed sugar scattered across his hospital bed. “Not that I don’t appreciate the avalanche of artery-clogging material right after my heart attack, but… what are you  _ doing  _ here?”

Patrick’s dad twists from his position at the bottom of the bed and locks eyes with Patrick. His brow creases into a frown. His lips purse.

“You’re sick. Your mother told me, and I—people visit their sick relatives in the hospital…” Patrick’s dad trails off, twisting the balloon string around his hands. “Um. Don’t they?”

His dad sounds defensive, uncertain, like he’s not sure this  _ is _ what normal people do, but he can’t find a book or a website with evidence to the contrary. This is the problem with strained father/son relations: there’s no easy solution to reach for, no well-known common ground on which to build foundations. The only thing that binds them is a last name, an employment industry, and a handful of genetic markers. Patrick doesn’t want to talk about any of those things. Patrick feels suddenly, overwhelmingly  _ exhausted.  _ All Patrick wants to do is sleep.

But, the thing is.

His dad  _ did _ fly down from Boston, didn’t he? He  _ did  _ stop at Citarella and pick out things Patrick used to love. He reached back through time for a thread of fatherly connection. So what if they’re more like strangers these days. Does it matter? Kids grow up and families grow apart and isn’t that sort of normal? His dad picked out blueberry tarts, which means he  _ remembers _ the only Patrick he’s ever truly known. He’s trying to be kind. Maybe it’s the morphine talking, but Patrick’s tired of pushing people away when they’re trying to be kind. 

“Yes,” Patrick says, before silence stretches into awkwardness. “Yeah, I guess that’s what people do. Thanks. For the, um… for the sweets. And the balloon. This is Pete, by the way. Pete, this is my dad.”

They shake hands and say hello and Patrick’s hopeful this will be one of those brief professional visits, where his dad doesn’t talk about work too much and no one needs to discuss their feelings or anything unsettling like that. It would be good for his cardiac health, Patrick thinks, if they didn’t discuss anything more intense than the quality of his dad’s journey from Boston and the weather. 

They do touch those conversational cornerstones, briefly: Patrick learns that the flight from Boston was ‘the usual, nothing worth mentioning’ that the weather outside of his hospital window is ‘what you’d expect from New York in March,’ that his step siblings are ‘fine, probably fine, one of them lives in  _ Missouri  _ now.’ His dad says all of these things while staring, wide-eyed, at the monitor Patrick’s hooked up to. Patrick nibbles the crust of a blueberry tart and enjoys the way it melts on his tongue and, maybe, begins to think that talking to his dad isn’t half as bad as he imagined it might be.

It’s fine, as long as they keep it light.

So, when his dad says, “Listen, son, can we talk about straightening things out between the two of us,” Patrick absolutely cannot deal with it.

“I was actually just about to,” Patrick starts, and closes his eyes, and wishes he thought of an excuse  _ before _ he started speaking. There is no convincing lie he can pull off in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, so, “Go to the bathroom,” he finishes lamely. At least he’s not still catheterized. At least the doctors trust him to make his way from the bed to the tiny attached shower room—en-suite facilities, Pete calls it—without risking his life. “So, uh, yeah. Hold that thought.”

Patrick swings his overcooked spaghetti noodle legs over the side of the bed when his dad turns to Pete and says, “So, are you Patrick’s friend? Or his, er—same-sex life partner?”

Pete makes an unattractive snorting sound, choking on his own tongue, probably. Patrick very nearly falls flat on his ass in horrified second-hand embarrassment. 

_ “Boyfriend, _ dad,” Patrick hisses, before his dad can set gay rights back by half a dozen decades. “We prefer  _ boyfriend.”  _

Patrick thumps back into the bed and glares at Pete, who’s slowly turning the same colour as a ripe plum, his shoulders shaking with the effort of containing his traitorous laughter. ‘Same-sex life partner?’ he mouths at Patrick, then blows him a kiss. Patrick makes an executive decision to find himself a better boyfriend  _ immediately.  _

“I thought you were going to the bathroom?” Patrick’s dad says. “You don’t want to leave it too late. Remember what happened in London when you thought you could hold it?”

“God,  _ dad.  _ I was, what,  _ six?” _ Patrick barks. 

“He left a puddle right in front of Buckingham Palace,” Patrick’s dad tells Pete, apparently hell bent on ruining Patrick’s life. “His mother was so embarrassed.”

“This is why I can’t go to the bathroom,” Patrick snaps. “Do you hear this? Do you  _ understand  _ why I can’t leave the two of you unsupervised?”

“Come on,” Pete says, proving he’s a horrible boyfriend. “You’re going to the bathroom and your dad and I are going to have a long conversation about our relationship and, also, about any and all embarrassing things you might’ve done when you were younger.”

“Oh,” Patrick’s dad says vaguely, looking up at the ceiling for a moment. “He didn’t do many embarrassing things. I mean, there was the incident at Martha’s Vineyard, with the—”

“No!” Patrick interrupts hotly. He considers recreational spontaneous combustion, or impromptu relocation to Mongolia. “No, this is  _ not  _ a thing we’re talking about right now.”

“Mr. Stump,” Pete breathes, his eyes shining as if powered by their own bioluminescence. “You have to tell me  _ everything.” _

Patrick’s dad frowns. “He spent the whole summer when he was four refusing to wear pants. Does that count? You should ask his mother to show you the pictures. Did the same thing the summer before college, but I think, in retrospect, that had  _ something  _ to do with the pool boy...”

Patrick’s horror cannot be contained in one human form. “Dad!” he shrieks. “Stop!”

Pete actually claps his hands with unrestrained glee. “This is the quality content I signed up for,” he tells Patrick’s dad, with a big, wolfy grin. “Honestly, this might be the greatest moment of my  _ life.” _

“I will marry you, just so I have the satisfaction of  _ divorcing you,”  _ Patrick tells Pete. His voice is low, a threatening cobra’s hiss. “I did not exist before September last year. I was a—a figment of your imagination, willed into existence because, God knows, you needed someone to up the classy in your life. I have no backstory, no history, and absolutely no embarrassing baby pictures or terrible haircuts from junior high. I am the fucking  _ Tyler Durden  _ of Wall Street.”

“My  _ new best friend _ says otherwise,” Pete says, clapping Patrick’s dad on the shoulder. Patrick’s dad looks faintly pleased, but mostly confused. “I’m riding this train all the way to Embarrassing Baby Picture Town.”

Patrick scowls and makes his distaste for the situation generally known. The hospital room is small enough that there’s nowhere for him to retreat, unless he rolls under the bed and that seems dramatic so instead he lies there, pouting slightly, and listens to his dad telling Pete as many horrible, mortifying stories as he can remember.

But then Patrick realises something. His dad remembers a  _ lot.  _ More than Patrick ever imagined he might remember from the eight years they spent living under the same roof. His dad talks about Patrick’s childhood fondly, smiling like he’s reliving every second of it. Patrick is—Patrick is  _ astonished _ by this. So astonished that he forgets to be embarrassed and finds himself joining in, correcting things, adding details,  _ laughing.  _ God, Patrick laughs so hard his ribs ache and the heart rate monitor hums and the kindly nurse pokes her head around the door once more and tells him, sternly, “Calm  _ down,  _ Mr. Stump.”

“Sorry,” both Mr Stumps say in unison.

They smile slyly at one another. Pete squeezes Patrick’s shoulder and Patrick feels so… Comforted, maybe. He had no idea he had such a desire to feel  _ comforted.  _ Five months ago, he imagined he’d die alone and unloved and, if he was lucky, eaten by house cats. It feels good to know that there are people who care about him. People who might miss him if he ever slipped beneath the waves: someone might actually toss him a lifebelt, instead of the water closing over his head and swallowing him whole.

Funny, that all Patrick had to do to reach this point was submit to the horrifying notion of being known. Weird, that Pete was right and Patrick’s spent his adult life holding back and hiding from the interactions that might give someone the power to hurt him, even when there’s no reason to suspect they might. Good, that Patrick held back for so long, that his actions and reactions have worked together in such a serendipitous way to bring him Pete, and his dad, and another shot at life.

Patrick realises he has absolutely nothing to lose by living his life in just the way he chooses; with just the people he wants. With Pete, and Henri, and Joe, and his family. So, Patrick smiles until his cheeks hurt and eats pastries and listens to all the embarrassing stories he knows, and a few he doesn’t, until his dad has to leave to fly back to Boston.

“We should do this again some time,” his dad says, carefully, shrugging into his coat. “You could come up to visit—show Pete the sights? Maybe in the summer? Bring the kid, he’ll love it.”

They’re not entirely okay, Patrick recognises that. An afternoon in a hospital room will not make up for twenty years of benign paternal neglect. This is the first step on a very long road, but every journey has to start somewhere.

Patrick nods and smiles faintly. “I’d like that,” he says. He’s surprised at how true it is.

“Mr. Stump,” Patrick’s doctor greets him, with significant malice, when he opens his eyes from a nap. “You have to leave, or die.”

Patrick was dreaming less than fifteen seconds ago. He’s not sure what he was dreaming  _ about,  _ but based on the metrics of the hum of the heart rate monitor on his finger and the eager lump of his  _ very _ enthusiastic and pathetically  _ hopeful _ erection, it was a good dream. He attempts to process the words spoken to him as he blinks and scrubs sleep from his eyes. Dimly, he’s aware that it’s not socially appropriate to display one’s rogue hard-on and tries to drag a pillow into his lap in the same series of stuttered, arthritic movement.

“Guh?” he says. It’s the best he can come up with. Honestly, considering the immediate nature of his recent unconsciousness, he thinks it’s a fairly good start.

“You,” she says sternly, tapping her index finger against his chart like Patrick has  _ any fucking hope whatsoever _ of understanding the meaning of the things she jots down on there, “are taking up a bed. A bed that could be used by a person who is actually sick. You are not sick, Mr. Stump. You are malingering, at best.”

Patrick takes a moment to allow that to sink in. On the one hand, he doesn’t like hospitals and the bed is uncomfortable and the food is awful and the nurse confiscated his blueberry tarts and gave him  _ protein bran,  _ something he’s almost certain would not happen in the comfort of his own home. On the other hand, there’s the almost-dying thing. Patrick licks his dry lips and blinks at the doctor and says, “But… I had a heart attack.”

“Cardiomyopathy,” she says briskly, snapping the monitor from his finger. “And yes,  _ had. _ You  _ had _ a cardiomyopathic incident. You’re not having one now. Now, you’re just a… not  _ un _ healthy young man taking up prime medical real estate.”

“Listen, I know you’re a medical doctor and you studied for a long time to earn that right,” Patrick hedges, “but don’t you think I need a few more days just to make sure it won’t happen again?”

Neither of them says anything for several long moments. The last thing Patrick wants to admit, out loud, to another person, is that he’s scared. Even though he is. He’s fucking  _ terrified _ actually, because the longer he spends in the hospital bed, the more he remembers about the minute or two at his desk that led him there in the first place. Patrick remembers the panic and the pain in his chest and the way his head slammed into the edge of the desk. He remembers, with clear-cut clarity, thinking that he did not want to die, but knowing he was dying anyway. Knowing that not wanting to die wasn’t enough to stop it from happening. At least here there are monitors and crash carts and defibrillators and qualified medical personnel who know how to operate all those things. At least here he’s safe.

Patrick bites his lip and blinks hard.

“Patrick,” she says, sitting at the edge of his bed. “What happened to you must’ve been very frightening—”

“Guh,” Patrick says again, aiming for a laugh but making a strangled whimper instead. “I’m not  _ scared.  _ God. It was just—just a stupid thing that my stupid body did and—and.” He gives up, because he  _ was _ scared, and he  _ is _ scared, and no one is handing out awards for false bravery. “And, okay. Maybe I’m a  _ tiny bit  _ scared.”

“That’s completely normal,” she says gently. “We see a lot of stockbrokers, being so close to Wall Street. Lots of heart attacks and arrhythmia and stress-related illnesses. Do you know what the response was, when one of my colleagues wrote a paper about your profession and the prevalence for heart failure?”

Patrick cocks his head. “Um… I’m guessing it’s not ‘better hours and paid leave’?”

“They installed defibs in all major banking centres, right on the trade floor,” she says. “That’s what your industry thinks of your wellbeing.”

“Oh,” Patrick says.

“For what it’s worth, if you don’t start taking it easy, there’s every possibility I’ll see you here again. Or, you know, somewhere even worse than a hospital bed.”

“Again, your bedside manner could use some work.”

She smiles at him wryly. “Or, you can take my advice and by the time you wind up back in this place, I’ll have retired and you won’t be my problem. Which is great because you’re not exactly making my job easy. Do you have  _ any  _ idea how distracting you and your boyfriend are to my nurses?”

Patrick laughs and then he looks at her. She looks right back at him, unblinking. “So…” he says. “Leave or die, right?”

“Leave or die,” she repeats. “Call your boyfriend, have him fetch you something to wear. If you walk out of here in that sloppy sweatshirt and your underwear, I think you’ll have to set up an official fan club.”

Patrick texts Pete and spends the next hour or so gathering his things and leafing through the magazine Pete brought for him. He’s still scared, accepts that he probably will be until enough time has passed that he can’t remember exactly how it felt to plummet toward the ground at warp speed, but he accepts that this is a fear he has to face head-on. It felt scary to walk into Harvard, alone, a scruffy kid from the Chicago suburbs, but he did it. He was frightened his first day at TAI Holdings, the day he lost his first million, the moment he realised he’d fallen in love with Pete, but he  _ dealt with it. _ Patrick has faced more fear than he’s ever acknowledged, even to himself. He can walk out of a hospital. It’s not a big deal.

Pete arrives with an overnight bag stuffed with a selection of his own clothes. Patrick frowns, pulling out ripped skinny jeans and a bleach-spotted t-shirt that smells like Pete was wearing it ten minutes ago.

“Was there something wrong with  _ my _ clothes?” he asks, shaking out a pair of Pete’s socks—bright pink and black checkerboard—and looking for underwear that Pete has neglected to bring. Because of course Pete doesn’t think about underwear. Like shirts at an Olive Garden, Pete believes briefs are optional.

“I looked, there were no obvious choices,” Pete shrugs. “You own more khakis and pastel polo shirts than I’ve seen gathered in one place  _ in my life.  _ And I went to private school so, like. Riddle me that.”

“You went to private school?” Patrick says doubtfully, looking Pete up and down. “Like, a real one? Where people pay money to educate their kids? You?”

“This is gorgeously complimentary,” Pete tells him, throwing a balled-up sock at Patrick’s head. “Yes, I went to private school. A real one. Easiest way to get into Yale, or so my dad always said. It kind of sucked, to be honest. Guys in private school are kind of… not cool, with guys who like sucking dick. Shocker, I know.”

For a second, Patrick thinks about blurting out, “I went to public school and still got into Harvard, so, like. Riddle me  _ that.” _ He doesn’t, though. Maybe he’s learning when to keep his mouth shut and let someone else talk. Just like a real boy.

“Did you even  _ wash _ this shirt?” he says instead, sniffing the armpit doubtfully. It’s a rhetorical question, Pete  _ definitely  _ hasn’t washed it. Patrick sniffs again, just because he can, and because, like everything else about Pete, it smells amazing. It’s not like Pete will notice.

“Are you sniffing my pit stink?” Pete says, amazed. Before Patrick can tell him to fuck off, he goes on, laughing like a drain. “You  _ are.  _ You fucking—you  _ weirdo!” _

“Shut up,” Patrick hisses, pulling the Bears sweater over his head with both hands and dropping it onto the floor. Pete circles his waist with both hands and presses his mouth gently to the back of Patrick’s neck. “That’s not appropriate. This is a public building and we’ll get in trouble.”

“I know you’re scared,” Pete says, brushing his mouth against Patrick’s ear lobe. “I know you’re worried that what happened to you is going to happen again. And I know you’re covering it up by being kind of a bitch.”

Patrick grabs Pete’s hand and squeezes until his knuckles show white. “I’m  _ not _ scared. And you can stop looking at me like that because I don’t need your pity.”

Patrick feels Pete’s exhale against his bare shoulder and struggles into the—dirty, probably—shirt before Pete can say anything else. He turns and sits on the edge of the bed and buries his face in Pete’s chest and panics, a bit, about the idea of leaving the hospital and the idea of going back into the office and facing Will, even if it  _ is _ to quit. They tangle together for a minute, Pete kissing Patrick’s hair and his uninjured eyebrow and his cheekbones and his nose and, finally, the corner of his mouth. He slides his fingers under Patrick’s chin and tilts his face up. The smile he offers is small, sweet. Hopeful. 

“I’ll take care of you,” he says. Patrick’s heart flip-flops, in the love way, rather than the ‘call a doctor’ way. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. I’ll… protect you. I will. And you’ll take care of me, right?”

Pete sounds so sincere, so gentle, and Patrick wants to believe— _ does  _ believe it. Of course he does. God knows, if Pete wanted to run away, he’s had so many opportunities and he’s never taken them. Not even when Patrick was at his most obnoxious. Not even when Patrick  _ lied.  _ So, maybe they’re pretty solid, for a pair of idiots in love, at least. Pete looks at him, smiling and a little fraught, and Patrick  _ wants _ so badly to be the kind of person who can take care of Pete. So, there’s that. Maybe love  _ can _ improve someone. Maybe it  _ is _ possible to grow and change and become someone better than the person you used to be. Maybe Patrick’s not a lost cause.

“Yeah,” Patrick says, kissing Pete, once, right on the mouth. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reconnecting with a family member can be kind of weird. Like, on the one hand, you want them to explain why they've behaved Like That for the majority of your life. But, on the other, you're related to them and you kind of want them to do better so sometimes, it's easier to give them a little rope and see if they use it to build a bridge or hang themselves. At least, that's my theory. Just in case anyone wondered why Patrick didn't, you know, shout more when his dad arrived. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you're all doing well and enjoying the summer. I promised a couple of people that only nice things would happen in this fic moving forward and I aim to deliver that :)


	24. Chapter 24

For the first time in eleven years, Patrick wakes on Monday morning with nothing to do.

Patrick is alone in Pete’s apartment. There’s no television, no radio, no last-minute, before school kid-wrangling. Clearly, everyone has left the building. It’s not quiet in the same way Patrick’s apartment is quiet, like a catacomb or mausoleum, devoid of life and filled with dust. This is different. A lived-in sort of quiet, like the apartment’s taken a breath, holding it until someone bursts through the front door looking for forgotten keys or missing jackets. Patrick revels in the knowledge that he has this warm pocket of space all to himself. He wriggles his toes under the comforter. He basks in the idle comfort of having nothing specific to do and all the time in the world in which to do it.

He considers jerking off, but only for a second.

Casually, and with no formal agenda whatsoever, Patrick wriggles out of bed. He replaces the warmth of Pete’s sheets with the warmth of Pete’s gym-gritted t-shirt. They need to have a discussion about Pete’s laundry habits, he thinks, plucking an oversized Bulls hoodie from the hook on the door. It drops down over his fingertips in folds, falling artlessly to the tops of his thighs. Cocooned, Patrick pulls the hood up over his hair and pads on bare feet into the living room. He looks at the couch and the television and the coffee table. He hesitates.

And here he hits the first wall of medically necessary unemployment: What do people _do_ every morning, if they don’t commute to an office in the city?

Patrick curls under the throw on the couch and flips through his phone. He checks Facebook, messages his mom and reads a suggested article about upcycling. He plays a couple of levels of Candy Crush and then gives up with a sigh. He’s bored. So bored it feels terminal. It’s absolutely possible to die of boredom and Patrick’s going to do it, slumped across Pete’s coffee table in a Bulls sweater and Batman boxers.

The bookshelf in the corner groans under the weight of row upon row of paperbacks with cracked spines and dog-eared pages. Reading is good. Reading is a worthy pastime. Patrick stands in front of the shelf—hands on hips, lips pursed—and considers the titles. He plucks out a copy of Death on the Instalment Plan and reads eight torturous pages. A migraine gathers like a storm cloud around his temples. He considers the viability of upcycling Pete’s cabinet into a flux capacitor so he can travel back in time and beat Celine to death with his own typewriter. Judging by the frantic notes scrawled in every margin in jagged lines of black ink, he’d be doing Pete a favour. Patrick drums his fingertips against the cover and sighs deeply.

He attempts to watch television, but his fingers skim to the finance channels on instinct. Watching the figures dart across the screen makes his head hurt and he can’t think of a single thing he’d like to watch instead, so clearly TV is ruined for him now. Patrick stares at the blank screen for a couple of minutes and looks at his own tousle-haired reflection until he starts to feel itchy.

This is not how his first golden morning was supposed to go. There’s no newfound sense of Zen. No blissful relaxation. Instead, Patrick just feels tense and uncomfortable. Classically trained in the art of corporate finance, he wonders horribly if he’s even capable of just… of just _being Patrick._ It’s not a reassuring thought. He blames Celine. “Goddammit,” he says, to the silent apartment. His voice sounds weird, even to himself. He says it again, quietly this time: “God-fucking-dammit.”

With nothing better to do, Patrick turns his attention to the most important meal of the day. He stands in the arch of Pete’s kitchen door and eyes the stove as if it might explode at any moment. Working at TAI meant starting every day with a granola bar and sixteen ounces of Andy’s blood-frying jet fuel of a roast, so a hearty breakfast is exactly what the doctor ordered. Okay, the doctor _actually_ ordered a short-term course of blood thinning medication and no physical or emotional exertion—which, _by the way,_ is wreaking havoc on Patrick’s sex life—and, technically, Patrick still works for T.A.I. until he fires off that resignation email he’s been working on, but. French toast? French toast is a good second option. 

Patrick busies himself locating bread, eggs, and cinnamon in Pete’s kitchen cabinets. How hard can it be? Famous last words and all, but _nothing_ about Pete’s kitchen makes sense. Every cabinet is a befuddling game of Tetris, the items chosen for their ability to stack together and maximise space, rather than things like _common sense_ or _logic._ Not to judge, but Patrick’s not sure he can conduct a long-term relationship with a man who stores his eggs in a cut-off cereal box in the cabinet next to his coffee maker.

He finds bread in the fridge—that’s another lecture, this one about the crystallisation of starch and the optimum temperature to delay staleness—and cinnamon sugar in the bread box. This gives Patrick pause but _all_ the spices are in the bread box, so at least there’s consistency to the insanity.

The radio provides ambient background Costello as he beats eggs and heats the skillet on Pete’s lousy little electric stove. It hits him that he doesn’t know how to make French toast, but Google points him in the direction of a cookery blog and, once he’s read a short story about walking Labradors along the beach in Winter, he finds a recipe. Feeling competent, he makes French toast and eats it standing up at the counter in his boxers and Pete’s sweater and it tastes pretty good, which is a nice surprise. Mouth dry, he hunts for mugs and finds them in the cabinet under the sink, next to the dishwasher salt and, confusingly, the _flour._

This is the kitchen of a serial killer, no doubt about it.

He’s halfway through fixing himself a cup of tea when the first wave of pulse-humming _fear_ hits out of nowhere. Boiling water sloshes out of the mug and over the back of his hand. Patrick slumps over the counter, panic clawing up his throat with hooked hands. It feels like something is chasing him, some horrible, ravening beast snapping at his heels, but Patrick’s still standing in the middle of the kitchen, still looking out of the window and into someone else’s unlovely kitchen.

Patrick stops, gaze fixed on the wall with the creeping damp, and as his breathing picks up, he realises he’s having a panic attack. He used to have them, back when he was at Harvard and when he started working at T.A.I. Holdings, before he became numb to the crushing sense of inadequacy. Before he learnt how to fix it with regular hook-ups in dimly-lit bathroom stalls. Back then, he had no one to help him deal with them, so he dealt with them himself. Dealt with gasping and crying and throwing things and then, when he calmed down, he would clean up stoically and pretend it hadn’t happened until it happened again. 

His first instinct is to call Pete. Calling Pete is also his second _and_ third instinct, but Patrick resists. Good thing he’s a man well-versed in ignoring his instincts. Breath stuttering, Patrick lists the reasons he should _not_ call Pete:

1) Pete’s already taken so much time off work to take care of Patrick, asking him to rush home now would be rude;

2) Pete has a business of his own, with staff who depend on him and clients who have paid for his time to pierce their skin with inky needles;

3) Patrick is a grown man who can navigate the choppy tide of a panic attack without the assistance of another grown man;

4) His phone is on the opposite counter and, curled into a protective ball against the refrigerator, Patrick can’t reach it.

It’s just a panic attack. He thinks it over and over as he digs his fingernails into his thighs and practises deep breathing techniques before remembering he doesn’t actually _know_ any deep breathing techniques but, like, it’s _breathing,_ how hard can it be? He’s been doing it for nearly thirty years without major incident. Patrick becomes sweatier with each choppy inhale. Eyes closed, he listens to the hum of the extractor fan until his spiking heart rate levels off and his hands uncurl from clawed fists and he unhooks his teeth from his swollen bottom lip.

Patrick sits on Pete’s cracked linoleum, a position that comes with a vom-inducing view straight underneath Pete’s stove, his knees drawn up to his chest. He feels small and pathetic, feelings he deserves because he _is_ small and pathetic, apparently the sort of man who has a panic attack making tea. _Tea!_ The most soothing of all the hot beverages! Anger makes his skin prickle. Can’t believe he’s letting himself fall apart over a stupid _job._ Can’t believe he’s going to lose his sanity alongside his cardiac health. Can’t believe he expects Pete to put up with him when Patrick can barely stand to be around himself.

Like, honestly, what the hell was he even thinking? That he could just pick up his raging dumpster fire existence and set it down neatly in the middle of Pete’s life? He makes sullen eye contact with what he _thinks_ is a stray potato, lodged between the bottom of the stove and the floor and something inside of him snaps.

He makes a decision, and a small sound of determination, and scrambles to his feet. Patrick stumbles into Pete’s bedroom and locates jeans, shirt, shoes, before his barely-there courage can desert him. He finds his wallet and his jacket and hurries from the apartment without looking back.

“Don’t be mad. Are you mad? I just—I couldn’t live like this, you know? I don’t know how _anyone_ can live like this.”

It’s impossible to tell if Pete’s angry. Or sad. Or thrilled. Figuring that out would involve looking at Pete and Patrick is aggressively _not_ looking at Pete. Looking at Pete is like looking straight into the sun even when Patrick _hasn’t_ gone ahead and overstepped the normal boundaries of human interaction. Right now, it would be like staring straight into a collapsing star _using the Hubble fucking Telescope._ So: in the interest of self-preservation, Patrick doesn’t look. Patrick’s hedging for thrilled, but furious seems so much more _likely._ He picks a spot above the living room window and stares at it intently, waiting for Pete to speak. His thumbs knit into anxious knots. The wait carves _years_ from the leaky hull of his already storm-battered cardiac life.

“What happened?” Pete says, sounding bewildered as he turns tiny circles around his tiny kitchen. Yeah, Patrick should’ve considered the possibility of _bewildered._ “I mean… what did you do?”

Patrick has cleaned the kitchen with such intensity the smell of lemon Lysol may never leave his nostrils. His hands are weirdly pale because _apparently_ bleach strips colour from _skin,_ as well as crusty kitchen counters. The kitchen gleams with an almost threatening level of cleanliness. Every square inch of culinary real estate has been optimised, laid out so that it comes to hand without even thinking. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Tomorrow, a delivery driver will bring spice racks and cabinet organisers, cooking gadgets, new pans and plates, a set of Japanese steel kitchen knives and a _jam spoon._ He’s… not sure, how the Pottery Barn stuff is going to look next to Pete’s chipped melamine cabinets, if he’s honest. But hey, it can’t look _worse._ So.

Patrick takes a deep breath. “I cleaned,” he whispers, with the shame reserved for ‘I went down on your dad.’ “I cleaned your kitchen, and I’m very sorry if you didn’t want me to. It seemed… less weird when I was standing in the store buying bleach. It seems _very_ weird now I’m saying it out loud.”

Oh, God.

Oh, _God._ This is embarrassing. This is the most embarrassing thing that Patrick’s ever done and he has a long and interesting record of embarrassing things to back this up. His face heats. He’s aware of every expanding blood vessel from his hairline to his shirt collar. His pale northern European heritage gives away everything. It’s probably best to broach the subject of the many, many boxes that FedEx will deliver tomorrow _now._ It’ll be like tearing off a band aid: just take a deep breath and absorb the sting. What’s another layer of humiliation on top of _so many_ that exist already?

“I, uh, I might’ve picked up a couple things…”

“What’s that smell?” Henri pipes up, ducking under the arm of his befuddled patriarch. 

Patrick’s about to say, “Lysol, you’d recognise it if your dad ever used it,” but Pete says, “I think it’s… bread,” and that’s a lifebelt Patrick will cling to _all day._ Head cocked, Pete asks, “Did you bake?”

“I baked,” Patrick confirms in a whimper, feeling stupider by the second. “Um. Bread, mostly. And, uh. Some other things.”

What else was he supposed to do in this newly clean kitchen, desperate for something to do with his hands to stop them from shaking? Martha Stewart _assured_ him that kneading dough would relax him. Patrick feels several _mega-annuum_ from fucking relaxed right now. He smiles, a sickly little grimace, and waves his hands in the direction of the fat, golden loaf cooling on the rack, the cookies, and the rich, sticky gingerbread he’s not sure is exactly right, but it seemed edible enough when he broke off a corner to taste test. Pete’s mouth is as round as his eyes. He goggles at Patrick, not bothering to disguise his shock. 

In the silence, Henri begins cramming cookies into his mouth at a speed envied by professional eating champions. “Theefe are _fooooo_ goo’,” he lisps spraying chocolate and crumb. “Goo’ job, Pa’rick!”

“Henri,” Pete says vaguely and with no real heat, “not before dinner.”

Henri grabs at least three cookies and darts toward the living room.

Silence stretches between them as Pete opens cabinets and checks shelves. His expression is impossible to read, his mouth the same soft, wide line it always is when he’s being kind and gentle with Patrick. For once, Patrick would prefer brutal honesty, would like to know exactly what Pete thinks of him, of them, of… Patrick’s overwhelming _this._ Pete kneels and looks under the stove. “My potato,” he says thoughtfully, “is missing.”

“You knew that was there?” Patrick blurts out before he can disguise his horror.

Pete looks at him. “You’re the one who cleaned my kitchen without asking. Don’t act like I’m the weirdo.”

“Did I overstep?” Patrick asks in a small voice. It feels like he over _leapt_ by a distance measurable in light years. “I can move everything back how you had it, I made a list—”

“—Of _course_ you did—”

“—It’s just—bread in the _refrigerator,_ Pete? And spices in the bread box?”

“Where else am I supposed to put the bread,” Pete asks, eyebrow arching, “if the bread box is full of spices?”

Patrick digs his thumb nail into the chipped Formica countertop. He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and worries it gently, looking up at Pete from under his bangs. Pete is smiling for real now, big and toothsome. Patrick smiles back, hesitant. “I just wanted to do something productive,” he says. “And you always take such good care of me, I wanted to do something for you and Henri. I was—I wanted to be _nice.”_

“You _are_ nice,” Pete says. “This is probably the nicest thing anyone’s done for me since I moved in here. Did I mention that someone cleaning my kitchen while I’m at work is like foreplay for me?”

“Shut up,” Patrick says weakly.

“Seriously,” Pete says, dropping his voice until it’s strung-out and groany, his mouth pressed to Patrick’s ear. “I’m totally half-hard for you right now. Fuck yeah, babe, Lysol me all over. Tell me you cleaned out the crumb trays and I’ll suck your dick so hard your eyes cross.”

They’re laughing before Pete’s finished the sentence, too loud, so that Henri bangs on the partition wall and the neighbour bangs on the ceiling in response. Patrick wraps his arms around Pete’s neck and leans his cheek against Pete’s shoulder and exhales for the first time all day. Because he did it, didn’t he? His first day, alone and directionless, and he did it. Not that he’s officially quit his job just yet— _Wait until your medical leave is up,_ Pete said, _Don’t have another fucking heart attack—_ but he _functioned_ and he’s proud of himself.

Patrick closes his eyes and kisses Pete soft on the mouth.

“I love you so much,” he says.

“What a coincidence,” Pete grins. “I kind of love you too.”

They eat the bread that Patrick made for dinner, mopping up Sicilian chicken soup made by the nice lady who runs the tiny deli around the corner. They tear into the crust with their hands, crowded around Pete’s tiny two-seater dining table, Henri balanced on a stool between them. Life feels good like this, crowded elbow to elbow around a Scandinavian flatpack table with an unpronounceable name. Patrick feels complete, the way he only feels when he’s around Pete and his son.

“I like when Patrick cooks,” Henri says. His bowl is empty and he’s nibbling a golden crust between his outrageously sized, freshly grown adult front teeth. “Daddy never cooks.”

“I do cook,” Pete objects. “It’s not _my_ fault you want to live on a diet of fish sticks and turkey dinosaurs.”

“Yeah, but when you cook it tastes gross,” Henri tells his dad scathingly.

Remembering the mac-and-hotdog incident, Patrick grins into his soup. “In Henri’s defence, I have yet to see any sort of proof of your culinary excellence. Boxed pasta and processed hotdogs doesn’t count as ‘cooking.’”

“Yuck,” Henri agrees, wrinkling his tiny iteration of Pete’s Wentzian nose. “Yucky yuck yuckyuck. Dad’s food is yucky.”

“Oh, like you _slaved_ over the soup?” Pete says playfully, nudging Patrick’s knee with his own beneath the table. “You make one loaf of bread—”

“—And cookies, daddy! He made _good_ cookies!”

 _“Thank you,_ Henri. You’re my favourite Wentz in the room right now.”

“—One loaf of bread, and you think you’re Gordon Ramsey?” Pete’s eyes glitter, his smile a sexy, dangerous slash of lips and teeth that Patrick wants to kiss off his face.

Patrick licks soup from the back of his spoon and uses it to point. _“You_ keep your pasta noodles next to your coffee beans, do _not_ judge me.”

Pete widens his eyes in mock hurt, touches both hands to his chest and says, “You _stole_ my potato,” and then they’re laughing together, all three of them. Patrick’s never felt so involved in a family that didn’t contain his own mother, his own flesh-and-blood relatives. They’re still teasing one another as they clean up, as they collapse on the couch together to watch Spirited Away, Henri giggling between them as Pete engages in a nimble-fingered tickle war. Henri passes out halfway through the movie and two-thirds of the way into Patrick’s lap and Pete leaves him there, smiling softly as Patrick covers Pete’s tiny genetic scion with a faded throw. Their hands brush along the back of the couch, fingers twining briefly. Patrick is so happy it feels like his heart is swollen, tender with feeling, glutinous with love.

“I’ve been thinking,” Patrick says, his voice low, his eyes on the TV so he doesn’t have to look at Pete.

Pete’s hand cups the back of Patrick’s neck, his fingers warm and rough as they bury in the hair at his nape. He hums softly, his thumb tracing the shell of Patrick’s ear. “Yeah?”

“I don’t think I’m ready to think about work right now,” Patrick says, then hesitates, unsure of what to say next.

He reaches forward and breaks each point of physical contact, Pete’s fingers falling from his skin. Circuit no longer conductive, Patrick grabs his drink from the coffee table and buys himself a moment by taking a deep red gulp of Merlot. The wine tastes bloody on his tongue and Patrick tells himself it lends him courage he wouldn’t have otherwise.

“I was thinking,” Patrick says slowly, “and feel free to say no, like. I promise I won’t be offended. But I was thinking…”

Pete smiles, encouraging. “Uhuh?”

Patrick lets out the breath he was holding, along with a tidal wave of words. “Look, you’re always saying you don’t have time to expand the tattoo studio because you have to rush home to pick Henri up from school, so, like, how about _I_ pick Henri up from school and, you know, do the life admin instead of going back to an office and doing the, uh, the finance industry admin and, oh God, this is weird, isn’t it? Like, I can _pay_ , you know, I have money for bills and stuff, I’m not just trying to freeload and kidnap your kid…”

Patrick stops in the middle of his nervous ramble when he realises that Pete is laughing at him.

“Fuck you,” he huffs. Embarrassment creeps up from his collar. Patrick’s pretty sure his face is hot enough to spark forest fires. He squeezes his eyes closed and grits his teeth and considers locking himself in the bathroom until the blush subsides.

“No, go on,” Pete says, smiling hard and wide. “This is adorable, you dork. You, Patrick Stump, are an adorable dork. A _dork_ able, in fact.”

“Fuck _you,”_ Patrick repeats. His blush intensifies. He’s so red now they can probably spot him from the Mars Rover. “I’ll go back to work for real at some point. Soon. I just thought… this could benefit both of us,” he looks down at Henri, “and him. I really care about both of you. I want us to be happy.”

“Wait,” Pete says, frowning. “Wait. You’re… are you actually serious? You would do that for us?”

Patrick nods slowly. “I mean, I’m doing it for me, too. I want to spend some time away from work, I need to figure out what the next step is for me and, like, I’m scared. If I go back into finance, even with another company, I’m going to fall into the same habits, make the same mistakes. Only this time—”

“You might die,” Pete says baldly.

Patrick pulls a face. “This time,” he repeats firmly, “I have someone to think about other than myself. Two someones. Working myself to death is no longer an option, I think. I owe the two of you more than part-time partnership. I’m all in, if you’ll still have me.”

It sits between them, vulnerable and tender, an open wound of a statement. Patrick knows now that dating isn’t straightforward, the reality of prioritising someone else’s needs above your own kind of staggering in its intensity. Dating someone with a six-year-old is somehow even more complex than dating someone without one and it’s not like Patrick’s devoted any of his twenty-nine years of existence so far to the notion of child-rearing and house-tending. It feels natural to suggest it, though. And, although Patrick’s tongue wants to fill the silence with excuses and backtracking, he sits, quietly, and lets Pete process it.

Carefully, Pete leans over Henri’s sleeping form and kisses Patrick softly, full on the mouth. Patrick doesn’t ask, but he thinks Pete’s saying yes.

Thursday, and Patrick’s sitting at a table outside Andy’s café, sweating through his Coltrane shirt and feeling like he’s been packed into someone else’s too-small skin. He vibrates at a frequency high enough to shatter glass, unfortunate because that’s what he feels like: glassy and fragile and prone to cracking. He bites his lip. Bolting feels like a viable option.

“You’re not allowed to bolt,” Pete tells him firmly, wrapping Patrick’s elbow in a death grip.

“You weigh about eighty pounds, I can physically lift you if I have to,” Andy tells him, setting down a caffeine-free tea at Patrick’s elbow.

“You’re covered on all sides,” Joe says. “So, don’t even try it.”

Patrick’s heart hammers, drill-like against his ribs. He looks up hesitantly, something he’s never done before because New Yorkers _never_ look up. “What if they—”

“Babe,” Pete says. “They don’t own you. What’s the worst they can do—withhold your PTO?”

“You don’t even have to do this,” Patrick says to Joe. “You didn’t have a heart attack.”

“Not this time,” Joe shrugs. “Not a risk I’m willing to take.”

It’s not that Patrick doesn’t want to send his Dear John letter of resignation to T.A.I. Holdings. Truly, Patrick has never wanted anything more in his life. It’s not that he wants to work for them, but. It’s not that he thinks his life will be meaningless without work, but. It’s not that he isn’t fulfilled, but. Patrick doesn’t know. He’s having a hard time thinking in sentences.

Joe touches the back of his wrist, his eyes shiny with the same fear-elation Patrick feels deep in his chest. There’s an identical email on Joe’s laptop screen. “We do this on three, okay?” Patrick nods like a puppet. “One… two… _three.”_

Patrick closes his eyes superglue-tight and hits send before he can talk himself out of it. The email disappears, whooshing away through the ether to land on the desk of William Beckett and the HR department. When he opens them again, Joe is smiling at him, pale and a little sweaty. Patrick grins back and squeezes Joe’s shoulder: united in relief.

“I guess we don’t work for T.A.I. anymore,” Joe says, laughing in a distinctly shell shocked way. 

Patrick says, “Fuck,” very softly, under his breath. 

“You did it,” Pete says, kissing Patrick’s temple. "Proud of you."

"I did it," Patrick says, dazed.

They raise a toast with paper coffee cups. Patrick feels lighter than he has in years, like he could walk on air straight over the New York City traffic without tripping at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry if Patrick quitting TAI seemed anticlimactic. I feel like the poor kid's had enough trauma to last him a lifetime. Facing Will and putting his blood pressure up to dangerous levels didn't seem like something I needed to force onto him. Sometimes, you just have to cut your losses and walk away. 
> 
> Ahhhh there's only the epilogue to go! I'm not ready! Thank you all so much for supporting me in writing this so far :) It only took 100k to convince him to quit...


	25. Chapter 25

They fly out to Chicago for Patrick’s stupid cousin’s stupid wedding. _‘They’_ , this time, is all three of them: Patrick, Pete _and_ Henri, which is Patrick’s favourite way for them to be. It feels like being in a gang, sometimes; a member of the world’s smallest and most exclusive club. Patrick is so, so happy Pete slipped him a wristband.

For the first time in a decade, Patrick’s life feels like a thing worth living. Patrick didn’t know he hungered for quite so much until Pete crashed into his life—meteoric, inglorious, marvelous, and exactly what Patrick needed—and, somehow, found a way to show up every crack and flaw. Patrick didn’t know a lot of things, caught in the ivory-walled prison of wealth and Wall Street, but Pete’s a patient teacher and, slowly, Patrick’s learning how to be loved.

Except, he’s not. Not even in the early hours of the morning, when Pete’s asleep on the pillow next to Patrick’s and Patrick has nothing to do but think about how Pete seems to love him. How does anyone become used to being loved? It’s so vast, so beautiful, like looking at every star in the universe all at once. Patrick stares at the ceiling and _marvels_ that people walk around every day just… being loved, and they don’t drop down dead from it. Carrying around all these feelings for someone else is—it’s weird. Patrick barely has the capacity to deal with his _own_ feelings ninety-percent of the time; he’s not equipped to nurture someone else’s.

But he does. Somehow Patrick—neurotic and grouchy and slightly myopic—is _exactly_ what Pete needs, too. It’s cosmic. Planetary alignment. No wonder Patrick feels small and insignificant whenever he thinks about it. No wonder he needs metaphors re: the vastness of space and time. He tells himself not to worry—that he doesn’t get a say in the matter anyway because he’s in love with Pete, too, and there’s not much he can about it, is there? It’s a lot like being three seconds into a skydive: the plane isn’t coming back, so might as well enjoy the view.

Every day, Patrick assumes he’s done it. He’s struggled to the summit and reached capacity and everything Pete does will no longer seem charming and Patrick’s huge feelings might start to shrink. They don’t. They grow, and Patrick’s heart defies all laws of universal physics and gets _bigger_ with them _._ Patrick thinks he’s fallen all the way in love and then Pete does _something_ —the flick of Pete’s wrist as he stirs his coffee, Patrick noticed it this morning and was unfairly charmed, it’s embarrassing, Patrick’s _embarrassed_ by it—and then Patrick’s falling all over again.

Sometimes, it’s all he can do not to take a car out to Ho-Ho-Kus, sit Joe and Marie down on their couch and demand to know how they’ve spent so long being in love and neither one of them has died or even passed out from it.

(He _doesn’t_ do this, but only because even with _his_ limited understanding of social niceties, he knows he’d look insane.)

So, here’s Patrick, a leaky balloon of overflowing _feeling,_ unsure of how to contain it while keeping all of his vital organs and biological parts in place. For so long, Patrick’s heart only had to contain enough blood and lymph to keep him functioning through the space between beats. Who knows what sort of damage all this additional strain is causing to his already overburdened cardiac system! It feels like love shines from him, spilling over like sunlight every time he smiles—which is much more often than before. It turns out, smiling’s a lot easier when you don’t have to shrug on the weight of a job you hate every single morning. Smiling’s even easier _than that_ when somebody loves you all the way.

Maybe it’s the nuptials talking, but Patrick has to say it out loud, to Pete, or risk spontaneous combustion all over his cousin’s carefully sourced ivory chair covers.

“I love you,” Patrick murmurs, the words catching in his throat.

Pete smiles, his wide, bright smile, his golden eyes shining as he presses a neat little kiss to Patrick’s cheek. “Love you, too,” he says, wrapping an arm around Patrick’s shoulder and pulling him close. Patrick mops his foggy eyes on the cuff of his suit, only crying because he loves Pete _so much_ and sometimes it’s too much for one body to contain and it’s got to come out _somewhere._ Pete adds, half-smiling, “Wall Street, are you _crying?_ I never would’ve had you pinned as a wedding crier. It’s stinkin’ _adorable,_ by the way.”

Ten minutes ago, Patrick wouldn’t have guessed he was a wedding crier, either. Then, two months ago, Patrick didn’t know how to make croissants from scratch, how to soothe a six-year-old teetering on the brink of hanger-induced meltdown, or the basic principles of first grade phonics. Patrick’s learning a lot of things about himself, and being in a family, what’s one more between friends?

“Don’t laugh at me,” Patrick mutters. “And don’t call me Wall Street. It’s just—Weddings. They’re intense. I’m watching two people, expressing their love for one another in front of everyone they know and care about, and I just think that’s really beautiful. Don’t you think it’s beautiful?” 

“I mean, the wedding hasn’t even started…” Pete shrugs. Patrick glares, and he adds, quickly, “Uh, but yeah. It’s pretty great. Trust me, I’m moved on the inside. Uh, emotionally, not in, like, a bodily function way.”

“This is _boring,”_ Henri whines, kicking his teensy dress shoes against the chair in front. He’s been in a foul temper since Pete wrestled him into suspenders and pressed pants. He looks adorable, but only if you didn’t see him bite his dad in an effort to avoid the itsy-bitsy bow tie. “These shoes are pinchy and my feet hurt and you said there’d be cake. And I wanna play Minecraft and have cake. When can we leave, daddy? You said there’s cake but there’s _no cake.”_

Patrick’s great-aunt Blanche turns in her seat and smiles with menace. Her matron-like bosom quivers under the weight of pearls and pastel pink twinset. “Where’s his mommy?” she coos, with meaning. They’ve either reached the volume limit of his child-intolerant relatives or she has Thoughts and Feelings on same-sex parents, neither of which Patrick feels much like addressing.

Patrick smiles back, beatific, and takes Pete’s hand. “In a condo in Malibu. I’m renting them both by the hour.” Blanche inflates like a pufferfish of heteronormative fury, and turns back to her order of service.

“You are the worst, stop making your family hate me,” Pete says to Patrick. To Henri, he says, “No video games until after the ceremony, buddy. No video games _at all_ if you don’t stop kicking the chair.”

“’s boring,” Henri sulks. “’m _never ever_ getting weddinged. Getting weddinged is _sucky._ When _I’m_ a grownup, I’m only gonna do _fun_ things.”

“I’ll remind you when you’re filing taxes,” Pete tells him fondly, ruffling his curls. 

The wedding march strikes up before Henri can think of an answer.

Patrick’s not sure what he makes of heterosexual wedding culture, but he’s doing his best to be nice and keep his mouth shut on the subject unless someone asks him _directly_ for his opinion.

“Why is the groom on top of the cake _running away?”_ he hisses from the corner of his mouth. “Is this a hostage situation? Should I ask him to blink twice if he needs help?”

Pete, wrangling a cranky and overdressed Henri back into his dress shoes _again,_ blinks up from floor-level. “Babe, it’s a joke,” he says. “Like, ha ha ha, the ol’ ball and chain, last minutes as a free man, that sort of thing.”

“He wrote ‘help me’ on the soles of his shoes in liquid paper.”

“That’s, uh, a thing people do. I don’t think he meant it.”

“It’s tacky. Did you have this at _your_ wedding?” Patrick asks, wrinkling his nose. He drops to his knees to help with Henri’s other shoe automatically. Pete nudges their shoulders together in a show of parent/parentally-adjacent person solidarity. “More to the point—is this expected at _our_ wedding? I don’t think—”

“You’re getting _weddinged?_ To _Patrick?”_ Henri shrieks, attracting the attention of at least eight of Patrick’s elderly relatives, including his gramma, who looks _delighted._ So, that’s a thing he’s going to have to address before the night is over, thank you, Henri Wentz.

“Er!” Patrick squawks, because they haven’t discussed weddings or moving in together or if it’s normal for Patrick to doodle his Stump-Wentz signature on napkins when he thinks no one’s paying attention.

“I mean, yeah. One day,” Pete says—like it’s _no big fucking deal—_ shrugging as he laces Henri’s shoe. Patrick chokes on spit or disbelief or his own ridiculous tongue.

Henri considers this. “Weddings are gross. You’d have to kiss.”

“Hnngh,” Patrick wheezes, suddenly aware of the passage of blood through his carotid artery and into the veins and vessels of his skull. It seems to stick there, sealed off like a balloon.

“That’s right,” Pete agrees easily. “We’ll get married and we’ll kiss in front of everyone and you’ll be the ring bearer and I’ll make you wear _three_ bow ties, one on top of the other, just to assert dominance.”

More blood rushes brainward, a whole ruby river of it. Patrick’s so red and his head’s going to explode like a microwaved grape and it’s all the fault of Pete and Henri Wentz. Henri scampers away to terrorise the local population of under-10s and Patrick’s left alone with his boyfriend-who-might-want-to-be-his-husband and, like, a thousand cubic feet of confused feeling. There’s not enough post-ceremony champagne being ferried by on silvered trays for Patrick to normalise what Pete’s saying. Hell, there’s probably not enough champagne in the _Chicagoland area,_ but he tosses one back anyway as Pete smiles a charming, unruffled smile _._ “What the fuck,” he wheezes into Pete’s ear, “was that?”

“It’s good to know where we’re going,” Pete says, his teeth catching the light in a menacing, sexy way. “That way, everyone’s on the same page. Do you remember what happens when we’re _not_ on the same page? Communication is key to a happy relationship.”

Patrick has a lot of questions. Actually, Patrick has, like, _all_ of the questions. Like why, and where, and _ohmyGodwhen._ Good thing his gramma descends on them, then, before he can truly embarrass himself because this—this is just a warm-up, as far as Patrick’s concerned. There are humiliating depths to be plumbed on this one, so many awkward and painful and true things he can say—he can sense it, bubbling away beneath his surface, a magma cave of embarrassing sap-talk.

“Patrick, darling,” says gramma, kissing Patrick on the cheek and then pulling back to glare at Pete with matriarchal force. “And this handsome young man must be Peter. How wonderful to meet you, sweetheart. Come sit with me for a minute, we have lots to talk about.”

“Er,” says Patrick helplessly. Gramma sinks her glossy red talons a little deeper into the meat of Pete’s bicep, propelling him across the room, and he _thinks_ he catches a snatch of “So, tell me your intentions with my grandson,” and he’s going to give chase, he swears he is, but then he’s flanked by a trifecta of mother, sister and great-aunt Blanche who eye him beadily and say, as one united familial force, “Weddinged?”

“Er…” Patrick says.

“You weren’t going to tell me?” his mom asks, hurt. 

“Er,” Patrick says. 

“He is _ridiculously_ hot,” his sister says. “If he has a brother you’re legally obliged to tell me.”

Patrick says, “Er?”

“At your cousin’s _wedding,_ Patrick?” his great-aunt Blanche says.

“Er!” Patrick says again, wishing for a convenient hole in which to sink, or a convenient God to smite him where he stands, clutching his champagne flute and cake fork. Religion and geography extend no quarter, and, as Patrick takes a hurried step back, his three formidable family members take two menacing steps forward. “So,” he says, drawing it out over a couple dozen syllables. “You might’ve heard some crazy rumours about my relationship status. I’m here to tell you they’re _all_ untrue…”

It's clear no one believes him. Patrick relieves the roster of wait staff of more flutes of champagne than is strictly wise, given he hasn’t eaten yet. Head spinning, he nods without thinking when his mom says something about weddings and Pete. He lags, realises she’s asking if they’ve considered a fall wedding before he can stop himself nodding again. God, his life is like an episode of Arrested Development. His sister appears from nowhere _again,_ looking smug like she did when they were kids and says, “So, Patrick, thought about which firm you’ll move to next?”

Patrick glares. Megan _also_ works in finance, so she knows his reputation is in tatters. Then, he opens his mouth and, like an endless fountain of horrible things, yet more lies tumble out of him.

“I thought I might open a bakery,” he says. He means it to sound sarcastic, but it lands _so well_ and it feels like the truest thing he’s ever said since telling Pete he loved him or the time he told his middle school guidance counsellor he wanted to be David Bowie. Megan’s mouth pops open and his mom looks intrigued, so he tries it again: “Yeah. I thought I might open a bakery.”

“I didn’t know you baked,” Megan says suspiciously.

With impeccable timing, Pete waltzes over and slips an arm around Patrick’s waist. “He’s very talented,” Pete says easily. “You should come have breakfast with us next time you’re in town.”

“I’m going to open a bakery,” Patrick says once more. “I’m good at it, and I have capital. Joe’s working for that investment start-up and Andy’s always saying he can’t find a reliable fair-trade bakery in the FiDi. It’s fate! I can be that bakery!”

Pete looks at him and grins fit to split his face in two. Before he can say anything, Patrick’s mom slides between them and clamps Pete’s hand firmly in hers. “Pete,” she says brightly. “Patrick was just telling me you’re thinking about a fall wedding. And tell me everything about that _darling_ little boy of yours. I’ve always wanted more grandchildren…”

The look Pete gives over his shoulder is equal parts confusion and panic. Patrick waves cheerfully and grabs another glass of champagne.

Patrick picks a neighbourhood that’s not too far from his apartment, close to Henri’s new school, a short walk from a Subway station with a direct train to Williamsburg. It’s purely coincidence that it’s an area popular with young professional families, close to office space, surrounded by independent coffee stores. He almost rents the first space he sees; it ticks all the boxes, has four walls and a roof and a door with a bell. But when he takes Joe, he doesn’t seem impressed and Henri won’t spend more than thirty seconds over the threshold before he gets fidgety and weird. 

“What don’t you like about it?” Patrick asks, his business loan burning a hole in his pocket.

“It’s fine,” Joe says, tipping his head to one side and avoiding eye contact. “It’s—”

“Haunted,” Henri declares. “It’s definitely haunted.”

Patrick’s not brave enough to ask an imaginative six-year-old how he came to _that_ conclusion. The last thing he needs is stories of ghost children lurking on the stairs and now, even if Henri _doesn’t_ say it, it’s all Patrick’s going to think about when he’s dealing with sourdough starters at four in the morning, so he turns it down. 

He comes even closer to renting out the fourth space he views but he decides to run it past Pete at the last minute. 

“This place is hideous,” Pete says, shaking his head. The realtor looks like he’s having an aneurysm, or considering a career change, the contract clutched in his sweaty fist.

Patrick is confused. “What the hell,” he says, “is wrong with it? It’s close to the main street, busy enough to pick up tourist trade but quiet enough that the locals’ll think they’ve found something _special—”_

“It’s disgusting,” Pete says, shaking his head. “It’s _four_ streets from the traffic, you’re nowhere near _anything_ anyone wants to see, and all I could smell when I walked in the door was the restaurant next door’s dumpster.”

Patrick looks around and tries to see what Pete sees. It’s dusty and unused, the window grimy and the jade green front door has lost most of its paint. There’s a weird smell coming from the abandoned refrigerator at the back of the kitchen and Patrick’s a little scared to find out its source. Plus, the heating system sounds like its dying whenever it fires up, there’s possible termite damage and the whole place would need a comprehensive refit from the ground up before he could even think about inviting a health inspector in to make it official. But…

“I thought I could fix it up,” Patrick says in a small voice. “Give it a second chance, you know?”

“I’m not sure how many chances this place has left,” Pete mutters.

“No, seriously,” Patrick goes on, warming up, getting excited for this new space before Henri can tell him he sees dead people and ruin it completely. “I know it needs a lot of work. The heating and lighting’s fucked, that’s a given, but that’s fine, I can fix them. I can’t use the appliances or the fixtures but that just means I get to install my own, put my own spin on it. Make it my own. I can use that little back room as an office, and put a TV and couch in there so Henri can chill out after school. There’s space for a few tables, and maybe even a fireplace, and that’s going to be a _huge_ draw in the winter, and,” he pauses, looks at Pete because he’s giving him a look Patrick can’t interpret, “What?”

Patrick takes a quick breath and waits for Pete to tell him he’s lost it completely, that the place is beyond redemption, that unloved things don’t get another shot at life, because they’re unlovable. It’s possible Patrick’s projecting onto this building, like, a lot. Pete cocks his head to the side and Patrick waits for the barrage of insults and business advice, but instead, Pete just says, “I get it.”

Patrick blinks. “You—you do?” He barely gets it himself. This is weird. 

“I do,” Pete agrees easily. “I think I understand more than anyone how it feels to see the potential in something that’s falling apart and do the work to make it something your own.”

“Um. Are you talking about Clandestine, or me?” Patrick asks, smiling. He means it as a joke, of course he does, but Pete blushes and looks down at the floor.

“Whichever you’d prefer,” he says, scuffing his toe through the dust. 

Opening day exceeds expectations. The grime is gone, replaced with gleaming oak countertops and reclaimed timber tables. There’s a fire crackling merrily in the grate, tray upon tray of cookies and bread and cakes laid out in display cases. Patrick makes hot chocolate and coffee and hands a tray of fair-trade biscotti to Andy when he calls in on a break from the coffee shop. 

“Just making up for what I cost you,” he says, grinning. 

Andy’s still wearing sunglasses, but Patrick thinks he looks touched. 

Joe and Marie call in with the girls, who are such enthusiastic taste testers that Patrick offers them both jobs for life, payable in muffins. “Not a chance, Stump,” Joe says, wiping chocolate mouth smears from his pants with a napkin. “Cash money only.”

Gabe arrives, and Travie. Patrick finds he likes them more now they don’t make fun of him. Pete says they don’t make fun of him because making fun of the boss’s fiance is strictly forbidden. More surprisingly, Patrick’s mom flies out from Chicago and his dad from Boston. They spend the day making a fuss of Henri, rotating trays, telling Patrick he’s making cookies in _just_ the wrong way. They tell him they’re proud of him. It makes Patrick’s chest feel weird and tight and it’s only prior experience that lets him know it’s not a heart attack.

“I like you best like this,” his mom says, pecking his cheek.

“Couldn’t be more proud of you,” his dad says, eating his fourth maple danish. 

Pete doesn’t say much at all. He doesn’t need to. Patrick’s never been great at knowing how people feel, but he’s not sure anyone could misread the looks Pete gives him. 

“I think that went well,” Patrick says, much later, when they’ve cleaned and locked up and they’re getting ready for bed. “I love baking and I love owning a bakery but, most of all, I love you and Henri. Thank you, you’ve been, like. Amazing. I don’t think I tell you that enough. Have I told you that lately?”

“Once or twice,” Pete says. Never one to wear pants for longer than absolutely necessary, he’s already down to his boxers and a fangy grin. “We love you back, by the way. In case it wasn’t obvious.”

Jacket, tie and pants abandoned—because what else would he wear for a formal occasion if not a suit?—Patrick pads across the room in shirt, socks and Red Sox boxer briefs. Today went well, and tomorrow he’ll get up early and do it all again. He can’t wait. 

“You know, we really need to get you some Yankees merch,” Pete says. “You’re a dropped waistband away from a public beating.”

“I went to college in Boston,” Patrick says loftily. 

“Tufts?” Pete says, widening his eyes innocently. “Boston U? Suffolk? Framingham State?”

“Harvard!” Patrick interrupts, a wave of relief so visceral his knees wobble ricocheting against his ribs. “I went to _Harvard!_ Harvard is the university I went to, and graduated from, and I went back for grad school, and I went to _Harvard.”_

Pete grins like a wolf. “Feel better?”

“Asshole,” Patrick says. Then: “God. Yes. So much better.”

“Snob,” Pete says fondly, setting his phone on the night stand and holding his arms out toward Patrick. “Come here. Snuggle with me. Tell me interesting things about your first day.”

Patrick has a better idea. “Is he…?” he says, inclining his head toward Henri’s room.

Pete nods, eyes glowing. “Out cold,” he says, smile knifing wider as Patrick climbs onto the bed and walks forward on his knees until he can straddle Pete’s lap. Patrick leans in and kisses Pete’s forehead and cheekbones and chin, because he can. Then, he presses down, meets Pete hips and heat and rising hardness, because they’re together and they’re in love and they have this fantastically enormous bed to take advantage of and Patrick won’t be the one who has to change the sheets in the morning. Pete pulls back, his grin filthy. “Why, Mr. Stump. Are you trying to seduce me?”

Patrick huffs and bites a kiss to Pete’s throat. “If you have to ask,” he murmurs into Pete’s ear, nipping at the lobe to make Pete gasp, “then I’m not as good at this as I thought.”

“Mm, baby, put the tie back on and you’ve got me halfway there,” Pete grins, teasing Patrick with an almost-kiss.

“Fuck you,” Patrick snips, sealing their mouths together and parting Pete’s teeth with his tongue.

Pete laughs and takes Patrick by the hips. _“Convince_ me to fuck you.”

Terms issued, Patrick sinks his hand down the front of Pete’s shorts and finds his cock, thick and hard and already wet at the tip. He slides his hand around it and, as Pete steals his next breath from Patrick’s mouth then leans back to roll his head against the headboard, Patrick pulls it out.

It’s a lovely cock, a hot and handsome thickness that fits Patrick’s palm just so. Patrick feels the same jump in his stomach he feels every time. He closes his fingers around it—one by one—and pulls up slowly. Pete’s hips chase his hand, seeking touch and friction, his moan noisy and obscene as Patrick strokes him slowly. Pete watches, his eyes bouncing between Patrick’s face and his fist. Patrick’s knuckles catch the sensitive underside of his own swollen cock with every tug and he savours the liquid heat as it pools low in his belly.

“Convinced?” Patrick asks, his voice wrecked.

Pete groans, hollow and broken open. “Not quite. You should keep convincing me. I’m, like, _almost_ convinced.”

They fight their way out of their boxers together, laughing, hands tangling in the rush toward skin to skin. Patrick’s dick pops free, pink and tall and proud and straining up to brush the coppery arrow of his happy trail, his fingers sinking into Pete’s messy hair as Pete wraps his own hand around Patrick’s length and squeezes. Patrick breathes deeply through his nose and hangs on. “Want to see who can hold off longer?” Pete teases, licking the hollow of Patrick’s throat. “I bet I can make you beg me for it.”

“Competitive delayed penetration?” Patrick gasps, arching into Pete’s touch. “Is that what we’ve come to?”

Pete grins and buries his face in Patrick’s neck. Teeth nip into the tender junction where jaw meets throat and Patrick experiences the liquid sensation of taking a cattle prod to the base of his spine. “No one’s come yet. Impress me, Stump.”

Challenge accepted, Patrick shifts his grip on Pete’s cock just a little, thumb brushing up under the head, dipping into the slushy wet mess at the cleft. He’s rewarded by Pete’s full-body shudder between his thighs, Pete’s fingernails sinking five tiny, stinging cuts into his hip.

“Good luck, Wentz,” Patrick whispers, his mouth pressed to Pete’s ear so he can feel Pete’s groan like Morse code against his chin.

Patrick kisses Pete, takes such long, grateful sips of his taste he fears he might drown in it. Pete cups Patrick’s face in both hands and holds him steady as he licks the need from Patrick’s tongue. “Lube,” Patrick pants, between Pete’s teeth nipping his lip. “Slick me up. Give me two, off the bat.”

Pete slips the tube from under the pillow and fumbles, his slippery fingers finding Patrick’s hole. Patrick moans, pushing down. If they’re still in competition, he’s pretty sure that’s points deducted but Pete’s eyes are glassy, his cock a throbbing, furious thing in Patrick’s fist, his hips rocking up with every tug, so maybe they’re just as greedy as one another. Who cares when everything feels this good?

Pete’s fingers slip inside of him, his dick hot and hard against Patrick’s, and Patrick has to muffle his sob in Pete’s shoulder. Salt on his lips, he rides Pete’s hand all the way down to the knuckles. It’s not enough. Patrick’s not sure he’ll ever get _enough,_ but he has all the time in the world to find out.

“Turn around,” Pete groans. “Let me eat you out.”

And, fuck. Talk about an offer Patrick can’t refuse! They wrestle Patrick out of his shirt together, buttons scattering across the hardwood. Patrick straddles Pete’s face and ducks his head and buries his nose in Pete’s close-cropped pubic hair. Patrick sucks the smooth, velvet head of Pete’s cock between his lips, tastes the bitter leak of Pete’s precome. The sound Pete makes is strangled, it twists like a fist around Patrick’s heart, and then he grabs Patrick by the hips and pulls him down to meet his mouth and Patrick’s making greedy, desperate noises of his own.

Pete licks him fiercely, possessively, his tongue lashing against Patrick’s rim. Patrick sucks Pete’s dick like the antidote is contained in his orgasm, like he needs it to sustain life, like the world will stop turning if he lets up for even a moment. Pete slides in a finger, then two, alongside his desperate tongue and Patrick’s blood begins to burn.

“Enough,” he gasps, when Pete’s fingertips brush the glittering, galaxy’s edge of his prostate. The room blurs a little at the edges, Patrick’s body a single tingling vein of raw _need._ Pete smirks, Patrick feels it, his teeth slick against Patrick’s hole. “Okay, you win. You fucking win. Need you inside me.”

When Patrick turns and straddles Pete’s hips, he can feel Pete’s spit slick on his thighs, between his cheeks. It’s kind of hot, kind of gross. Pete’s red-faced and sweaty and if he’s smug about winning he’s too horny to show it. Patrick’s more turned on than he knows how to verbalise, so he just says, “You—You gorgeous fucking thing. ‘m gonna ride you ‘til your dick aches.”

Pete quirks an eyebrow. “You don’t want me to…?” he says, thumbing over Patrick’s wrists, pinning them briefly behind his back and letting go. Patrick shakes his head, his smile all teeth. It’s taken him a while to figure himself out, but it’s better when his head’s not full of static. It’s better when Pete’s inside of him and Patrick can think all kinds of dirty thoughts about it, when Patrick can shift them so Pete’s fucking him just right and Patrick can feel it all the way down to his fingertips, to his toes.

Patrick buries both hands into his own hair as he sinks down onto Pete’s cock. Lower lip between his teeth, he watches Pete watching him and feels that first exquisite inch part him beautifully. He squeezes two lusty fistfuls of his hair in his fists until his scalp aches, sinking lower and lower until he’s taken Pete all the way to the base. Pleasure swells from the point Pete’s buried inside him, blooming through Patrick’s hips and heart. Pete’s fingernails scrape the tender skin of Patrick’s hips, his eyes wide and golden as a sunrise. The moan that escapes him would not bear iteration.

“You are,” Pete says, tweaking Patrick’s nipples until his cock jumps, “the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

Patrick pauses, flexing around Pete’s swollen length. His prostate throbs with Pete’s cock as if driven by a single, four-chambered heart and he looks down into Pete’s smiling, happy eyes and says, “I’m going to fuck _end_ you.”

Pete’s eyelashes flutter. “Oh, Patrick,” he murmurs, thumb rubbing the crease of Patrick’s groin, “be my guest.”

Pete’s so hard inside of him and Patrick wants to make it last. He takes it slow at first, barely rocking over Pete’s hips, his hands splayed over Pete’s heart. He wants to draw it out but Pete is so beautiful, so fucking hot Patrick can barely stand it sometimes. Patrick bites his lip and rolls his hips, thumbing Pete’s nipples until Pete’s tip feathers over his prostate and then all bets are off.

Bed creaking under his knees, Patrick collapses over Pete’s chest, kissing his throat and his ear and Pete’s wide, serious mouth. Pete’s hips meet Patrick’s, thrust for thrust, united in motion, single-minded in heat. Patrick gets a hand around his cock, but Pete has the same idea, their hands tugging, rubbing, pulling at Patrick with choppy determination. The pleasure builds, syruping through Patrick like warm honey.

Pete whispers, “Gonna come so hard inside of you. Gonna flip you over and lick it out of you,” and Patrick is no longer in control of, in order, his vocal cords, his hips, the violently-wanting, precome-dripping, oblivion-seeking sway of his hard-on.

“Oh my fucking _God,”_ Patrick whispers. Their hips move in earnest now, Pete’s mouth on Patrick’s throat, his nipples, sucking bruises to Patrick’s collar bone. Patrick’s body can’t possibly contain so much tsunami-force _feeling._ Patrick’s going to fucking _die._

When they crest that wonderful golden wave, they do it together. Patrick comes so hard he goes temporarily _blind_ with it, his ears ringing, Pete pulsing thick and hot and _huge_ inside him. He comes arcing white in the minute space between their bodies, streaking Pete’s stomach and chest and dripping from his own. Boneless and bonerless, Patrick lets his forehead drop to Pete’s shoulder and feels Pete kiss him gently on the mouth.

“Damn,” Pete says, a short eternity later.

Patrick untangles himself from Pete and flops onto his back. “Yeah.” Then, after a beat, he adds, “The eating out thing sounds _great,_ but like, could you give me a minute? I think I might have another heart attack if you overstimulate me right now.”

Pete laughs and knocks out the lamp and tosses Patrick his undershirt to clean up with, and that’s both disgusting and endearing so Patrick only grimaces a little. They settle on the bed together, Patrick curled into Pete’s side and Pete’s hand warm in the small of his back.

“Okay, so. The thing is,” Patrick starts, when a little of his cortical function leaks back as blood leaks from his dick, “you’re the first person I’ve loved, outside of my family. The first grown-up that doesn’t belong to me that I’ve looked in the eye and thought, yeah, he’ll do for me.”

Pete’s smile is wide, gilded in the moonlight that angles through the window. “Go on.”

“I just want to say I’m sorry,” Patrick says, feeling small and scared. “I basically crash landed in your life and I’ve lied to you and I’ve put you through so much shit. I want you to know, I’m a better person than I was when we met, and I think I’m a better person because I want to be better for you. Because you deserve better.”

Pete tips up Patrick’s chin and kisses him softly. “Hey,” he says quietly. “In spite of, or maybe because of, everything you’ve done, I love you. I’m so proud of you. You don’t have to, like, _improve_ for me.”

“Yeah,” Patrick agrees. “No, yeah. I know. But. I love you, too.”

With his head pillowed on Pete’s chest, Patrick realises he hasn’t thought about work _once_ in the past three months. He thinks that no life choice he’s made is truly horrible if it brought him Pete and Henri. Now, Patrick spends his days baking and helping with homework and beating Henri at Mario Kart and only checks his phone to text Pete, or Joe, or Andy, or his mom. The folks at the Genius Bar have probably decided he’s moved away, or died, or got caught smuggling several tons of cocaine into the country, or something cheerful like that. He sleeps when he’s tired, in Pete’s arms or on the couch, and he never feels like he’s hallucinating from exhaustion.

Patrick counts his blessings now, every single day. He has his health, and his future stretching out in front of him, rosy as a sunrise. He has his family, his friends, his business, his certainties and his possibilities. Yes, Patrick counts his blessings, who wouldn’t?

But he always counts Pete and Henri twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so, I reach the end. Or, at least, I reach the place I'm choosing to stop. Although I'd happily write another 100k of curtain fic for these two and their happy little unit, this is where I'm going to say goodbye to them. Someone pointed out in the comments that this fic has been running for 5 months, which kind of blew my mind honestly. It feels like so much has happened in the world since I posted that first chapter, and I thank all of you for coming along and reading this fic, even as we experienced such huge, overwhelming change in our real lives. 
> 
> I guess there's nothing left to say but thank you so much. For reading, for leaving kudos, for commenting. And, if you enjoyed it, hopefully you'll come along for the next fic, whatever that might be :)


End file.
